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Arts for All Announces Winter Schedule
By Corbin Hirschhorn, KVNO News
December 20th, 2017
Omaha, NE—Arts for All is a nonprofit organization in Omaha dedicated to providing affordable arts education for all ages. Arts for All offers a wide range of weekly classes in five different locations across town covering drawing and painting, instrument lessons, dance, acting, writing and more.
“We have so many different kinds of art classes,†said Judith Mallory, Founder and Executive Director of Arts for All. “For example, this year we’re expanding, because we are focusing on—I’m going to call it the STEAM program. Education focuses on STEM, which is science, technology, engineering and math, and that’s fine. I want to add art, so I make it STEAM: science, technology, engineering, art and math, and we’ve developed some classes that bring those things in, but if you were going to a site you could find many of these different classes or topics or materials available. We love it when a parent takes a guitar class, for example, with their child, or grandparents come in and take some things with their children or grandchildren, and it’s really nice to see families doing things together.â€
Mallory, a recipient of a local Jefferson Award for Public Service, believes that arts education is an important, but perhaps threatened, asset to the community.
“I’ve had this vision for thirty years of a way to provide arts education, for people to see the beauty in the world, to express themselves, to have all the benefits the art can bring because they get cut usually first when schools are looking at how to cut back on expenses. We live in a society that values sports highly; I still value them, but I also want equal opportunities for the arts.â€
Mallory was dedicated to arts education even before founding Arts for All in 2006. Since then, the organization has grown, continuing to expand into new disciplines, finding new collaborations.
“I was the director of a program similar to what Arts for All is at a nonprofit, and they closed it down just when we were getting ready to offer classes. I said to the people that were working with us that we needed to offer our own version of this type of program, and so we quickly said OK we have people in rolled in our program even though we closed the doors at some places, but we’re going to call them all up and see if they’d be interested in coming to a new nonprofit. We decided to call it Arts For All, because we really did not want to discriminate against anyone. Everybody should have the opportunity. Everybody is born creative, and we wanted them to realize that.â€
Arts for All also welcomes collaborations with other organizations and schools, expanding access to the arts in Omaha.
“We are also partnering with Courteous Kids nonprofit, and we are working on a program called ‘Emma’s Art Kit’ program. A winner of a Jefferson Award, a person that I met, is a fifteen year old girl who has been struggling with cancer since she was seven—brain cancer—and her goal is to see that one hundred fifty thousand children or youth in hospital type situations have art materials to use. She has been in and out of hospitals so many times, and when she would be there she would enjoy using art materials and she wanted them to have, whoever it would be, wherever it would be in the U.S. ,to have an opportunity to express themselves and deal with the stress they’re under by using art materials. We have been working on this. I promised them that we would help in their goal of one hundred fifty thousand, because it also matches our mission of making the arts available and affordable for everyone.â€
In January, Arts for All will collaborate with Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, offering young patients art kits with materials for drawing, painting and sculpting.
Arts for All’s 14 week winter semester begins Jan. 15. Enrollment is open until the 2nd week of February. For more information about classes or donating materials for Emma’s Art Kits, visit ArtsforAllInc.com.
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