Inspiring Yukon Students
Artist in the School provides high quality, engaging and culturally diverse programming in schools across the territory. Over the course of the 2025-26 school year 40 artists and arts groups travelled the Yukon to deliver over 3,500 arts encounters to elementary and secondary school students.
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Featured Artist
Helen O’Connor
Helen O'Connor is an award winning Yukon visual artist who specializes in papermaking and paper arts. She exhibits her works in the Yukon, across Canada and Internationally. In 2025 Helen's paper art was featured at the International Paper Art Biennale in Shanghai. She is an experienced educator and possesses a… Learn more ›
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Featured Program
Strange Creatures with Meshell Melvin
This project begins with a cooperative drawing game called “the exquisite corpse” or (for elementary students) “ the strange creature”. In this game, students begin the drawing with a head (of anything) then fold the paper over and pass it along. From 3 hidden parts; head, torso and legs, a strange creature emerges. These drawings become the sketches for the mixed media process, which follows. Using the techniques and materials of drawing, painting and collage, the figures are assembled onto 3 small panels, which are strung together in the end to join the parts together.
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Community School Touring Program
The Community School Touring Program sends performance artists to every Yukon community school. The goal of this program is to expose children to types of performance art they may not regularly encounter, with preference given to acts that have an educational component. CSTP impacts hundreds of students each year and provides important and inspiring opportunities for youth in Yukon communities.
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About Artist in the School
The Artist in the School program (AIS) provides Yukon school children with the opportunity to be instructed and inspired by practicing artists and to learn to work with a variety of art forms and media. It is available to all Yukon elementary and secondary schools, including 21 schools in Whitehorse and 14 in the communities.
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