Crafting with Kids

As an artist, I am aware of the importance of having the best art supplies, the right tools and the finest resources for all of my artistic needs available to my everyday constructs. At school, I am provided with all of the necessary supplies and all of the things that I want and need. I am able to achieve anything I want. After I have painted a watercolor, for example, my teacher supplies me with any king of foam board necessary to mat my final work. Thus, I am able to show my artistic potential to everyone.

Unfortunately, not everybody has access to such a great wealth of supplies. There are children in inner city school districts that go to schools which don’t have enough money to buy enough artistic supplies. They may be aspiring artists, but their dreams are many times not reached because of the lack of the resources their talent requires. I am lucky to be in such a school district where the community is supportive of the arts and so the funding of our arts department is thriving. It is too bad that the same cannot be said for every school.

I am certain that there are children in these poorer school districts that are just as talented as anyone in a well-funded school. Their art may also have more of a story to share with the onlooker, something with a deeper meaning even. Their art could possibly depict their lives and what it is like to be in such a crummy situation as they may be in. For example, if one artistically talented child who did not have the resources available to him lived in a home where his parents abused him, his artwork may be therapeutic to him and also have a deeper meaning, a hidden message even, told through the paint.

These reasons and many more are why there are programs out there that take donated art supplies and distribute them to schools where the arts department is lacking. These organizations will take new or lightly used paintbrushes, crayons, canvas, matting board, colored pencils, pastels, and many, many other items and give them to the schools and the children that need those supplies the most. When you donate to such a cause, you get that happy, warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart that tells you that you’ve done something good for someone else, that you may have just enabled a child to pursue their dream. What could be better than that?

In school, we run canned food drives, and coat drives, and pennies-for-patients fundraisers, but I think that an art supplies drive would be awesome. Since I go to a fairly well off school district, I’m sure that it wouldn’t be a problem to get one up and going. Our arts department could sponsor it and we could get other schools that are nearby to join in as well.

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