Giving frontline heroes tools to make art
Can art really make a difference during a critical time? Is art, and the process of making it, critical to our progress?
On April 28, 2020, I began a three week journey to deliver art supplies to frontline doctors and nurses across America. The trip confirmed that the answer to these questions is a resounding YES. It is time for us to take the arts seriously, and to prioritize investing in the arts as a critical tool for economic progress. Yes, I went there; There is a huge correlation between the arts and economic health.
For the past five years, I’ve run a nonprofit called Paint the World, whose mission is to make opportunity for artistic expression accessible by sprinkling the world with blank canvases. We typically secure these large blank canvases and art supplies in underserved communities around the world to not only enable a domino effect of creative confidence, but to also inspire creative problem solving. Beautiful, cohesive collaborative paintings often result (view examples here).
