The Coolest Art Store Around

Back in September I started volunteering one day a week and a place in my hometown whose "...mission is to promote creativity and sustainability in by collecting, organizing and redistributing usable materials for creative purposes." It has probably been the coolest and most fun thing I've done in a long time. Each day that I go in I'm always pricing different things that people donate and I love to see all the new things that get put onto the floor.

Their purpose is to:

• Provide a place for individuals and businesses to donate materials that can be used for art instead of putting them in the waste stream.
• Provide low cost art materials to the community.
• Inspire the community to reuse and find creativity in alternative ways.

I'm pretty lucky that my town got one of these places, thanks to the founder, considering that we're not as powerful as San Fran, Portland, Chicago, or NYC. Since the start of this art store being open in March of last year, they have had over 70 new and returning volunteers, saved over 9,000 pounds of creative things from being put in the garbage, and over 1,000 or 2,000 volunteer hours.

All the money that is earned from paying customers goes back into the rent payment of the building that they're using, but the goal is to turn volunteers into employees so that they can get paid for their hard work! Another goal is to start offering all types of classes for the community, from grade school kids to seniors! And I hope to be there every step of the way.

Comments

Anonymous said…
We need more paint!

Popular Posts