It Started With a Sparrow: How One Newport Mum Accidentally Sparked a Creative Community

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Alisa who sat on the living room floor beside her young children drawing a sparrow for two hours, not realising that tiny moment of creativity, connection and calm would quietly grow into one of the Northern Beaches’ most loved creative communities years later.

There were no elaborate business plans, glossy branding strategies or investors sitting around boardroom tables. Just pencils, paper, children and a mother rediscovering something important about herself in the middle of ordinary life.

That is exactly how Art Class with Alisa began on the Northern Beaches almost eight years ago.

At the time, Alisa Nyquist was a stay-at-home mum with three very young children who had stepped away from a successful career as a senior television producer to focus on raising her family. Like many women navigating that transition, she admits she was quietly wrestling with identity, exhaustion and self-doubt behind the scenes.

“My self-esteem was a bit shot at the time,” she says honestly. “I had hung my hat up from a successful corporate career and suddenly found myself at home with three little kids and very little support. I didn’t really see value in what I was doing.”

But something shifted that afternoon while drawing with her children.

“It felt peaceful and nourishing,” she says. “It was mindfulness one line at a time.”

Proud of what her children had created, Alisa posted their drawings online and shortly afterwards another local mum reached out asking if she would teach her daughter to draw. At first, Alisa thought the woman was simply being polite. It took several asks before she realised she genuinely meant it.

That single request quietly changed everything.

Soon another family joined, then another, until Alisa’s tiny dining table could no longer hold the growing number of children wanting to attend. So she hired a classroom at the local Newport school, printed flyers and hoped for the best, despite having absolutely no idea where any of it might lead.

“The fear was imposter syndrome,” she admits. “I wasn’t even technically a teacher. But the value in the why was more important to me. Kids are naturally creative and they were looking for a space where that creativity could be encouraged and supported.”

Eight years later, Art Class with Alisa has quietly become something far bigger than drawing lessons. Before Covid, Alisa was teaching more than 160 students a week and has now helped several thousand children, teenagers and adults reconnect with creativity in one form or another.

What makes her classes different is that they are not really about producing perfect art.

In fact, Alisa believes the entire point has been misunderstood for years.

“It’s not about being good at art,” she says. “It’s about art being good for you.”

And perhaps that is exactly why her classes resonate so deeply with people right now.

In a world increasingly dominated by screens, algorithms, overstimulation and AI generated everything, there is something deeply human about sitting quietly in a room together creating with your hands. There is no performance or pressure, just people reconnecting with themselves and each other.

“My job is really to create a creative sanctuary,” Alisa explains. “I watch people relax into themselves. I hear laughter. I watch stress disappear and calm take its place. People leave better than how they arrived.”

Interestingly, many of the adults who attend her classes arrive carrying the same belief: “I’m not creative.”

Alisa gently challenges that idea constantly.

“Children don’t naturally label themselves like that,” she says. “Somewhere along the way people begin judging themselves and disconnecting from creativity.”

One story that stayed with her involved a woman in her fifties who claimed she had no memory of ever drawing before. By the end of the session, she was staring at her artwork proudly and calling herself an artist.

“That was special to witness,” Alisa says.

This year, Alisa’s work was recognised with a place as a finalist in the Local Business Awards, something she admits left her emotional after a personally difficult few years.

“I cried,” she says simply. “I felt seen.”

And perhaps that is ultimately what Art Class with Alisa has quietly become for so many people across the Northern Beaches. A place where they feel seen too.

People are not judged, measured or expected to perform, but simply welcomed exactly as they are.

@artclasswithalisa