Meet Our Partners: Paint Love
You may have heard of Paint Love from last year’s Poetry Slam at Renfroe Middle School. DEF supported Paint-Love’s collaboration with the school through its Zara’s Arts Infusion Fund. Besides partnering with DEF through several Zara’s Fund projects, Paint Love is also our new neighbor! They moved in down the hall from the DEF offices last year.
Paint Love was founded in 2014 by Atlanta artist Julie McKevitt with the mission of bringing extraordinary arts programming to youth, especially those facing poverty and trauma. Paint isn’t their only medium – they work with artists of all specialties – paint, dance, textiles, paper, spoken word, sculpture, even video.
In practice, they pair an artistic medium with a deeper concept or theme. Last year they worked with the seventh grade ELA teachers to provide a three-week VIRTUAL poet residency to help students prepare for their annual Poetry Slam. Through another DEF Zara’s Fund Arts Infusion grant, Paint Love is working with the upper elementary schools Talley and F.AVE this spring in which 10 artists are working with 19 total classes – around 400 students!
At Talley, the artists are connecting fiber arts with the concept of eco-justice. The third-grade students will learn about consumerism and how products/materials can be recycled/upcycled and reused to create a new product as well as an employable skill. The fourth-grade students at F.AVE will be incorporating paper crafts and writing with the IB principle “Where are we in place and time?”
Laura Shaw, executive director of Paint Love, believes the collaboration between our organizations could become a true community movement. “DEF has already done so much good work to incorporate conversations and resources on equity, mental health, and social justice,” she commented. “This allows Paint Love to bolster existing DEF programming through creative, trauma-informed, arts-infused work in classrooms.”
As the Paint Love website says, “Art is our vehicle, but the soul of our work is showing young people that their voice matters, their ideas are important, and their actions can make a difference in shaping the future.” We wholeheartedly agree and look forward to continuing our partnership in helping Decatur’s youth learn and thrive. We’ll have more photos of these projects in the coming weeks, stay tuned.