Higher education institutions have devoted substantial efforts to providing first-year students with resources and support to successfully navigate their academic journey. The rapid challenges at the academic and social levels lead to the need for more inclusive and innovative supporting methods. This scoping review explores the use of shared activities in an instrumental peer mentoring context to promote the academic and social engagement of university students. The focus of this review is to explore the extent of utilising shared art activities in peer mentoring contexts and identify evidence of using these activities to enhance metacognitive skills to promote first-year students' experience. Following the PRISMA statement for scoping reviews, relevant published studies were searched in seven databases according to the eligibility criteria. A total of 430 articles were identified across the fields of peer mentoring, art-based interventions and metacognition. There were 43 articles included, data extracted and synthesised. The purpose was to examine three groups of research, including peer mentoring for university students, particularly those that utilise collaborative activities overall, art-based interventions and, finally, research on metacognitive strategies when used within instrumental activities to enhance student university experiences. Results of the scoping review indicate that students in their first year of university might benefit from instrumental peer mentoring programmes that provide a link between visual arts and metacognitive insights. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.