Welcome to Next Door Neighbour Studio
Next Door Neighbour Studio aims to provide a hub and gathering space for community members, and beyond to gather, learn and create together.
The mission of Next Door Neighbour Studio is to create a welcoming, supportive and encouraging space for folks from all walks of life to learn and experiment creatively together.
Meet The Team
Our instructors are passionate artists dedicated to helping you develop your skills and discover new artistic practices. They bring a wealth of experience and a deep commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive artistic community.
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Jill Peters McGillivray
The Keeper of the Space/Co-Owner
Jill is the co-owner of Next Door Neighbour Studio, and founder of ‘Art with Jill’ - art classes for kids.
Jill began teaching 1 student in 2015 out of her home, and grew her little business to host about 60 kids each week and ran art camps in her backyard all summer. Jill’s approach to teaching is open, and process based, focusing on the act of making rather than the final product. She will mangage the studio at Next Door and the creative mess that happens here!
Jill earned a BFA (Honours) from the University of Manitoba in 2012 and is a practicing artist/painter, also working in her studio downtown.
Jill and her family are proud members of the Glenelm neighbourhood and live walking distance from the studio.
Jeremy Wat
The Digital Alchemist/Instructor
Jer is the Digital Alchemist and an instructor at Next Door Neighbour Studios with a focus on adult classes and workshops. He attended a fine arts highschool in Toronto where he was taught many art forms including sculpture, illustration, printmaking, and graphic design. He was known by his teachers as the one who wouldn’t write his book reports but preferred illustrating them. He took this love and has illustrated several children's books. Now based in Winnipeg, he has developed a passion for the art and community of printmaking. After teaching a few workshops on block printing in schools and art spaces, he developed a fascination for teaching. This led to the opportunity to be a studio instructor at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq, teaching adult students the art of block printing. He and his creative family crew love and live in Glenelm, just a short walk away from the studio.
Crystal Nykoluk
Mud Maven/ Instructor
Crystal is a ceramic artist, educator, and Mud Maven based in Ste-Geneviève, Manitoba. A graduate of the University of Manitoba’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program with an Honour degree and thesis in Ceramics, Crystal has spent the past 17 years working deeply within the clay community as both an artist and instructor. She currently serves as Ceramic Studio Technician at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, a position she has held for 18 years, where she supports and encourages others in discovering their own creative voice through clay.
Crystal’s work and teaching practice are rooted in slowing down, paying attention, and creating meaningful experiences by hand. Inspired equally by prairie landscapes, dense city textures, trees, concrete surfaces, sunsets, and everyday rituals, she is drawn to the space where opposites meet: functional and sculptural, rough and refined, natural and human-made. Through clay, she explores how seemingly contrasting ideas can coexist to create something unexpected, tactile, and alive.
A slow maker herself, Crystal encourages students to value process over perfection and quality over quantity. Her classes focus on curiosity, experimentation, and helping people reconnect with both themselves and one another through gathering, making, and sharing space. Whether foraging for leaves to press into clay, building sculptural mugs, or learning to trust intuition through handbuilding, her workshops invite participants to move thoughtfully and create with intention.
Working from her home studio and country workshop space, Crystal continues to develop a personal studio practice centered around texture, form, and the emotional connection we build with the objects we live alongside every day.
Helga Jakobson
The Wizard of Admin/Co-Owner
Helga Jakobson is the Wizard of Admin and co-owner of Next Door Neighbour Studio, and a transdisciplinary artist. She has an MFA and has exhibited, lectured and participated in residencies across North America, Colombia and Europe. She has been teaching at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (ranging from preschool-adult) for the past seven years, has been an Artist in the Schools through the Manitoba Arts Council and has mentored through multiple organizations.
She served as the Executive Director of ArtsJunktion from 2020-2023 and currently works as the Sustainability Coordinator for the Forks. She is the Butterflyway Ranger for GlenElm and is passionate about the environment and sustainability, loves gardening and walking dog Wednesday around our beautiful GlenElm neighbourhood.
Anastasia Waly
Cultivator of Wonder/Instructor
Anastasia is a visual artist and educator with a background in Fine Arts, Education, and Montessori pedagogy. She holds a BFA (Honours) and BEd and has over 15 years of experience teaching art. Her own practice is rooted in craft and folk-art traditions, with a deep appreciation for beauty, material, and the ideas that emerge through making. She works across pottery, fibre arts, drawing, painting, and mixed media, moving between traditional processes and her own contemporary interpretations. Her work is grounded in the belief that making by hand can be both a way of thinking and a way of seeing the world.
Chantal Degagne
The Artful Gardener/ Instructor
Chantal is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, and art educator with more than 15 years of experience creating and teaching in schools, studios, and community spaces. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba and a Bachelor of Education through Queen’s University’s Artist in Community Education program.
Her practice moves between drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and increasingly, gardening and land-based creative work. Chantal is especially interested in the places where art, nature, community, and learning overlap. She has developed arts programming with children and adults throughout Winnipeg and has worked as an artist and educator in community arts organizations, galleries, public schools, and community-based projects.
As a Francophone artist and educator, she is also able to support Francophone, bilingual, and French-language learners who would like to engage and practise their French while making art. Students are welcome to create, converse, and explore in English, French, or a mix of both—whatever feels most comfortable.
Her teaching is playful, hands-on, and process-driven, with an emphasis on experimentation, building real artistic skills, and helping young artists trust their own creative ideas.