When the record-breaking floods of late February inundated Lismore they took away the creative output of hundreds of school children.

Art works, big and small, made for fun or final exams, were lost as rising waters entered classrooms claiming everything. Amidst them, countless paintings, drawings, ceramics and sculptures created by year 12 students for the HSC.

Rebecca Simpson, visual arts teacher at Richmond River High in North Lismore, says the majority of her year 12 students’ HSC art work, and accompanying work diaries, were ruined by the floods.

“Everything was absolutely destroyed,” she says.

“Our school was inundated with flood water and is closed currently. No one was allowed to enter the site after the flood because it was too dangerous. Our whole art classroom was basically a big muddy pool, nothing was able to be retrieved.”

After two school years affected by the coronavirus pandemic, losing months of HSC creative work and planning hit visual arts students and staff hard.

“They’ve felt distraught and panicked,” Simpson says. “They’d been working on their body of work since term four in 2021 and for it to all just be taken away was quite traumatic.”

In response, the National Art School in Darlinghurst hosted two free all-day art workshops for students in the Lismore area last Thursday and Friday. Held at Southern Cross University’s Lismore campus, they aimed to help students produce work for their HSC, provide practical knowledge and the experience of painting, and boost participants’ morale and confidence.

Tuition, from two National Art School teachers, was free and a car-load of donated materials, including canvases, paints, brushes, charcoal, paper and pencils, driven by Lorraine Kypiotis, head of undergraduate studies at the NAS, and instigator of the workshops, arrived on Wednesday.