How to Teach Art and Design with Minecraft Education

24 Sep 2025 Art and Design Splash Art

Grab your pickaxe and paintbrush—it’s time to mine some creativity! Teaching art and design doesn’t always mean breaking out the construction paper, markers, and glue sticks. With Minecraft Education, you can bring art class into a world your students already love, while fostering creativity, collaboration, and a deeper appreciation for design.

Art and design are essential tools in the curriculum that build creativity and innovation by allowing students to spin up ideas from scratch, visually express themselves when words just aren’t going to cut it (like pixel art portraits of their pets or favorite food!), and explore culture by recreating landmarks, textiles, or traditions from around the world. When students design, they’re not just decorating—they’re problem-solving, storytelling, and seeing the world from new perspectives.

Minecraft Education is a digital art studio where students can:

  • Experiment with color, pattern, and texture using blocks as their medium.
  • Build virtual galleries or museums to showcase their work.
  • Collaborate on community projects, from designing murals to reimagining cityscapes.

And the best part? You don’t have to start from scratch. Minecraft Education offers ready-to-teach art and design lessons, complete with objectives, guiding questions, and extension ideas. Think of it as a teacher’s crafting table stocked with everything you need to level up your lessons.

Ready-to-Use Lessons

Want to jump right in? Check out these Minecraft Education Art and Design Lessons where you’ll find projects ranging from pixel art and architecture to cultural exploration and storytelling. Perfect for sparking “aha!” moments and helping students unlock their inner artist—no paint cleanup required. A few highlights:

  • Peter is Here: Explore 2,000 years of architecture and discover how technology restores the wonders of St. Peter’s Basilica.
  • The College of Art: Learn about art elements in creative regions, then build together in a gallery space.
  • Create Your Own Musem: Choose a topic and create a museum exhibit to showcase it.
  • World Cities and Architecture: Travel through time to see how civilizations built their cities and developed unique architectural styles.
  • Influential Artist Collection: Learn about the lives, techniques, and works of Michelangelo, Piet Mondrian, and Claude Monet.

Don’t forget about Build Challenges! These short and creative challenges present an easy way to bring art and design into the classroom. For example:

  • Amazing Architecture: Design a new town square building in the style of art deco, cubism, or post-modernism while learning about architectural movements.
  • Pixel Portraits: Create self-portraits or images of famous people to accompany a history lesson.

Art and design fuel creativity, self-expression, and cultural awareness—and Minecraft Education is the perfect tool to bring those lessons to life. So, grab your digital brush, load up your world, and let your students craft their creativity one block at a time.

Check out more Minecraft Art and Design lessons here.