Celebrating 28,557 Teaching Hours in 2025! Enough Time to Repaint 19 Mona Lisas
Welcome to art-K Wrapped 2025! Forget Spotify, here’s our year in stats, unwrapped.
2025 was a year of learning, research, Oxo, and (most importantly) a lot of art.
We taught for a total of 28,557 hours, equating to 3 years and 2 months of continuous art making (without sleep).
Let’s dive in!
There’s no confirmed record of how many hours Leonardo Da Vinci spent painting the Mona Lisa. However, art historians often estimate 1,000–2,000 focused hours spread over years.
So, assuming this is true, we could’ve worked together to recreate more than 19 Mona Lisas in 2025.
That also equates to the time it would take to do 171,300 loops around the Louvre, provided you don’t get caught stealing! 
How many hours did you join in?
During our total teaching hours, we taught all ages from 4 to 91 – from our youngest student in a Family Workshop, to our oldest adult students at art-K Worthing and art-K Croxley Green. They were both born in 1934! One student at art-K Oxford has been attending 2 classes a week since 2023, meaning they’ve enjoyed 218 sessions.
Our total student count at the end of 2025 is 8,000 students, building a community that spans the UK. We’d fill the Royal Albert Hall 1.5 times over!
It would make for quite the party! Speaking of which, we hosted 298 parties in 2025. The biggest party animals were art-K Dulwich with 19 parties this year!
And the party continues into 2026! We’ve just discovered 2 new “genres”, and by genres, we mean locations on the art-K map :
art-K Newcastle
art-K Saltaire
That means we’re kickstarting 2026 with 48 direct art-K Branches and 12 franchisees, which adds up to 60 studios in total.
So, how did we fill 28,557 hours?
This is where things get technical!
With all those hours creating: What were your Top Mediums of 2025?
Answer: Clay!
In July 2025, we united to showcase these skills at the Oxo Gallery for our annual Summer Exhibition. We met 8,300 people who enjoyed seeing your artwork.
When you add it up, it’s also the equivalent number of visitors to the National Portrait Gallery on a busy weekend.
Finally, let’s take a look at art-K’s “Top Artists” 2025
Well, we’d agree we have 8,000 “top artists”. We’d like to say a huge thank YOU for taking part!
When we reached out to our teachers to ask them to share their standout moments from 2025, we were flooded with heartwarming stories.
Here are 3 teacher shout-outs pulled from a hat:
1. Art-K Beckenham shout out the progress of a GCSE student who started art-K at age 11. Take a look at their progress!
“A shout out goes to James, who has been coming to classes with us for 4 years, from 11- 15 years old. He has been growing and evolving his art skills through the years! James has always had a brilliantly creative mind, a unique style filled with humour… Through the years, it has been a treat to see how feeding in more techniques to create realism has influenced and evolved his unique style!”
2. art-K Walton celebrates a student who has been learning at their club for 6 years, showing kindness to her peers:
“Mia is a student I want to shine a spotlight on. She has been attending art-K Walton for five/six years. Mia is a pillar of our Friday class; she is incredibly kind and caring, and she fosters a wonderful environment by encouraging all her peers… We want her passion for art to be celebrated.”
3. art-K Wimbledon share pride in an adult student who completed this portrait across 12 weeks:
“Samantha, one of our adult students, spent more than 12 weeks working on a portrait project, which ended up being amazing!”
There were many more stories to share! You can follow us on socials to find out more:
Instagram & Facebook
But for now, that’s a Wrap!
We’re grateful for this wonderful community that spans the UK, as we grow to Newcastle and Saltaire in the New Year. We’re really looking forward to chapter 2026! This is to be the 26th year of art-K, and a lot has evolved since it all began down in the first studio in Ashtead, Surrey.
Now, we’d love to hand it over to you: our wonderful parents, students and teachers! We’d love for the comment section to be filled with your highlights of the year. Whether that’s a special thank you to a teacher, or your own personal triumphs.
