Crafting the Future
I wanted to tell you about Crafting the Future (CTF), an organization some friends and I started in early 2019. CTF is a collective of artists (and patrons of the arts) who are concerned about the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in our fields.
We are addressing this issue by connecting youth arts organizations from around the country to craft schools like Penland School of Craft and Haystack Mountain School of Craft. The fields of art, craft, and design in the United States do not reflect the full spectrum of people in our country. When groups of artists go unrepresented, an inaccurate and incomplete story is being told, sold, and preserved—and everyone loses. We feel that this work is vital to making a shift towards a more inclusive community.
In 2019 we raised over $8,000 through Kickstarter to send two students of YAYA, the dynamic youth arts organization in New Orleans, to a two-week workshop at Penland. The chosen artists, Tyrik Conaler and Shanti Broom spent two weeks at Penland in summer 2019, with Tyrik in the painting studio with Michael Dixon and Shanti in the iron studio with Shawn Lovell.
In February 2020, we grew our fundraising efforts from a one-time campaign to a rolling membership and are now accepting members through our website with the aid of our partner YAYA. In May 2020 we were awarded a $17,000 John and Robyn Horn Foundation grant. This grant will be used for student tuition, travel, promotion costs, and staff.
We are excited to say that we are expanding our matching funds partnerships to include Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, The Studio of Corning Museum of Glass, and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. We are also developing an internship program as well as looking into scholarships for pre-college programs. In the last few weeks, we have had 1000 new members and raised almost $80,000 in cash donations from individual donations. Artists and groups are organizing raffles and donating hundreds of dollars at a time. Our vision of artists coming together to create equitable opportunities is becoming real.
(We are currently in talks with RISD pre-college about matching scholarships but it has not been finalized.) CTF is a collective but primarily run by myself and Corey Pemberton. He is a glass artist and painter and you can see his work www.coreypemberton.com Please reach out to us if you have any questions!
