CREATE: Expressive Arts Workshops for HKUST Students

The CREATE program offers a series of expressive arts workshops designed for HKUST students. Workshops offer a mix of options for creative expressive ranging from painting and drawing to music and movement. These workshops support self-discovery and expression via a relaxed, fun environment. 

No art experience required. Our goal is to offer opportunities for stress relief, mood boosting, and to empower our students with tools to help navigate university life. Whether life feels challenging, your need a mood lift, or you just want to switch your brain off, make something with your hands and meet people in a low-pressure space, CREATE is for you.
 

Past Workshops
CREATE BreakOneLyricOnePaintingTreeOfLife
CREATE BreaksOne Lyric One PaintingTree of Life
This workshop focused on sparking joy, building resilience, and equipping students with new tools to integrate into their own lives. This was not your average workshop—this one was about learning through circus skills (yes, really)!Students experienced music and visual art in a dynamic way focused on self-discovery. Guided by experienced facilitators, students selected a meaningful lyric and transformed its message or mood into a unique painting. Trees traditionally across cultures symbolize strength, resilience and the essence of nature. This 2-hour mixed-media art-making workshop gave students the opportunity to make personal connections with these metaphors through a guided, step-by-step process. 
Why Expressive Art?

Expressive arts are creative activities used to support well-being. Instead of focusing on making something “good,” expressive arts focus on the process and experience of making art by using creativity to explore emotions, release stress, and cultivate self-awareness.

In a CREATE workshop, expressive arts might look like:

  • Visual Art: drawing, paining, collage
  • Hand-on Crafting: clay modeling, simple craft activities, using LEGOs
  • Sound & Music: rhythm, instruments, sound-based relaxation
  • Movement: body movement, dance
  • Story & Reflection: writing, guided prompts to help make sense of your experience

Expressive arts give your brain and body another way to play, decompress, experience, and process life. Some workshops will feel calming and reflective. Other workshops will feel energizing, playful, or simply satisfying because you created something unique. 

About Project CREATE
CREATE: Cultivating Resilience with Expressive Arts for Thriving Empowerment

With university life can come burnout, stress, anxiety, and pressure around academics and life after graduation. Knowing that students may struggle to seek and ask for support, the DSTO and School of Science launched a new Teaching & Development Grant (TDG) project: Cultivating Resilience with Expressive Arts for Thriving Empowerment (a.k.a. CREATE) designed to embrace our students where they are, be easily accessible, and focused on preventive support for students.

The CREATE Project is a well-being and resilience initiative that uses expressive arts to help students reset, feel more like themselves, and develop skills to help them navigate life’s challenges. 
 

CREATE
Enquiries

For enquiries about the program, please contact us via email at ucreate@ust.hk or call us at 2358-5701. You could also visit us in person at Rm 4334, Academic Building (Lift 3).

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