Empowerment Through Arts Integration
With over 25 years of teaching experience, I founded VISIE on the belief that visual arts profoundly enhance learning. Our research-based workshops help educators integrate the arts meaningfully, building critical thinking, creativity, and communication across the curriculum.
Drawing on my research, I found that professional development is most effective when it combines active, engaged learning, reflection, and ongoing support. Our workshops are designed around these principles, guiding teachers in applying new strategies in their classrooms.
My work extends beyond workshops. For my doctoral research, I spent time inside the summer art institutes at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, studying how teachers actually carried that experience back into their own classrooms. That question, how professional development really lives on in teaching practice, still shapes everything I design.
Join us in bringing art-infused learning to your classroom, strengthening discussion, creativity, and classroom practice.
—Julie Etheridge, PhD
Not Just Talk—Real Growth Happens Here
Growth
Our approach spans a wide range of practices, from arts integration across the curriculum to art-making grounded in exploration, not replication. We invite educators to reflect, discuss, and shape possibility, guided by the belief that teachers never stop learning. Our professional development centers on creative thinking strategies that deepen practice and nurture a lifelong love of learning.
Online Workshops
We design live, interactive online experiences that blend hands-on learning with small-group discussions and thoughtfully designed, accessible activities, such as close looking, writing, sketching, conversation, or art-making. Sessions are capped at 8-15 participants and always real-time, never pre-recorded, so every educator's voice is heard and connections form across North America and beyond.
In-Person Workshops & School Partnerships
The same hands-on, research-based approach comes to your school or school board in person, through workshops, curriculum design, and program evaluation, tailored to your team's grade levels and goals. Sessions run up to 25 educators, in Greater Montréal, Ottawa, or wherever your school is located. All workshops align with the Quebec Education Program and Ontario curriculum.
Focus
Our focus is on using a balanced approach to curriculum design that blends traditional methods with contemporary, research-based practices. At the heart of this philosophy is demonstrating to educators how arts integration fosters critical thinking and self-expression, making learning more dynamic, memorable, and impactful.
Resources
Participants receive ready-to-use classroom materials and ongoing support after every workshop.