This article concentrates on artist Vida Lahey's Queensland-based activism for children's art classes in the context of progressive ideas that circulated between the wars. I argue that Lahey functioned within a wider, well-informed, democratic elite. Indeed, it was her social and cultural capital, and that of friend and sculptress Daphne Mayo, that enabled Lahey to actively constitute agency. Her activism, produced children's art classes in Brisbane outside of formal educational structures that were slower to respond to progressive ideas.