Mellissa's studio is situated at Palm Bay Primary school with a group of female artists Megan Metcalf, Sarah Stokes, Sara Jackson and Nova Marshall. Organised by Melanie Tong, the artists offers extra enrichment of arts to the school's curriculum as well as running regular projects teaching different skills and techniques. Since starting at the beginning of 2020, various groups of children have learn how to cast with alginate, plaster, drawn what they see down a microscope and made sculptures with modroc and clay.




Mellissa runs a series of workshops mixing Art and Microbiology. DYOM (Design Your Own Microbiome) is run at schools, colleges and festivals. Mellissa runs various workshops linking to science, as well as Illustration workshops. 

Design Your Own Microbiome Workshop with Bio-Artist Mellissa monsoon. "The Design Your Own Microbiome workshop encouraged club member’s to learn about the invisible world on their skin. The workshop allowed club member’s to engage with the invisible world through sculptural and painting techniques, alongside collage. As a part of the workshop, Mellissa taught the club how to cast their face’s (or hands) with ModRoc using basic casting methods and marbling inks to create ‘bacterial skin’ similar to existing microbiome. Club member’s were trained through health and safety alongside particular techniques needed to use the materials involved. Club members worked in pairs to each create a microbial portrait imitating the aesthetics of bacteria through sculpture. This workshop was formed to communicate the artist, Mellissa Monsoon’s, work on the project Microbial Me in which Mellissa and her collaborator, Professor Mark Clements, create bacterial sculptures with agar and living bacteria from the surface of her skin (in addition, scientist Michael Moseley’s body was Mellissa’s and Mark’s subject for a BBC4 documentary aired on the 17th May 2017). Club Member’s enjoyed learning about Mellissa’s work in the creative industry, watched video footage and time-lapse video art created by Mellissa, had the opportunity to ask questions regarding her career and witnessed how everything works behind the scenes to create such aesthetically pleasing, and conceptually articulate, work." - Written by Mindi Virdee from The National Saturday Art Club.