What we do….
Our Mission is to provide Structured Art sessions, in a variety of settings, to vulnerable primary and secondary school children between the ages of 6 and 18. We raise self-esteem and develop improved motor skills, ultimately leading to a growth in confidence and increased positivity – allowing the students to engage/reengage with family and their own school community.
The Little Art Stars is an Ayrshire based charity who deliver art classes to vulnerable children in order to help build their self-esteem. We look to support children who would otherwise be unlikely to access these classes outside of school hours. Our aim is to grow and develop a nurturing environment within schools to allow children to develop their art skills in a safe and fun space.
We provide art classes with the object of improving motor skills and build self-esteem leading to a growth in confidence and productivity. All our classes are progressive, allowing the children to use different mediums. The classes are run at the optimum time, on the school premises, in order to avoid any loss of educational time for the children.
Click here to read more about our journey
What our classes look like…
Our Little Art Stars classes deliver the “Little Art School” highly structured syllabus that is taught in all Little Art School studios.
Our teachers who deliver the Little Art Stars classes arrive at each lesson with their super suitcase that allows the pupils to experience using all the materials that we use throughout the course – watercolour pencils, gouache paint, watercolour paint & soft pastels.
Our partnering schools provide an appropriate space for us to deliver the lesson in and we take care of everything else, arriving ahead of the class start time to set up the materials for each student.
After the class, each child’s piece of work is mounted for them to take away with them and our teachers clear down the space.
Our Scholarship programme…
Before we developed our project to deliver our classes in schools, we were already running our Scholarship programme within our Little Art School studios. Originally, this was aimed at Young Carers providing self-esteem building art sessions and providing respite. From these standalone sessions we identified the potential benefits of incorporating the young carers into our mainstream studio classes.
This then developed to incorporate a wider range of students, not necessarily just young carers but youths from varied situations who could benefit from the art classes. Our funding helps to support local children dealing with situations where they may be vulnerable or dealing with trauma. The individuals that attend these classes showed immediate and long-term improvements in confidence and ability.
“I would like to say thank you so much once again for supporting Sophie in The Little Art School classes. Sophie lost her beautiful, adored sister, who took her own precious life at the age of 13 years old, when Sophie was just years old. For everyone else, life moves on, but not for us. She puts on a facade but even five years on, she still talks of her sister every day. She is very much aware of the loss of all the things that she should be doing with her sister now. For example, her sister had told her that when she was 18 years old and she would be ten, she would take her on her first shopping spree. That would have been now, and she remembers this….
Attending the Little Art School has enabled her to meet other people, to express herself and develop her creativity in a safe environment, with art being a therapeutic output. Art is so important in terms of providing her with a distraction and it allows her to focus on something else, to keep her hands busy and to focus her mind on the task in hand, letting her see how she can cope better when she feels particularly sad. She looks forward to attending art classes. It is the only thing that makes her jump out of bed early on a Saturday morning. She said that is nice to be part of something and she is always made to feel very welcome by the teachers and children alike. The Little Art School has helped increase her confidence in herself. She has her artwork proudly on display at home and now believes us when we tell her how talented, she is, whereas before attending the Little Art School classes she would say that she was no good at anything.
I cannot thank you all enough for giving my heartbroken little girl some joy in her life. You are just amazing.
Following the success of this integration we approached local companies to help with funding to support other local children dealing with self-esteem issues or children dealing with trauma. We have been providing classes for around 15 children on an ongoing basis who fall within these criteria, with funded places withing our mainstream studio classes. This has been running for the past 5 years.
Family Values…
When the Little Art School first founded its charity The Little Art School Trust it was predominantly focused on our work with those living with Dementia. As the Trust’s initiatives grew, we developed our children’s programmes it eventually became time to split our two main causes, to allow us to focus more effectively on each area.
There are now two separate charities –
Dementia Arts Trust & Little Art Stars Charity
We may have that separation in place to help us focus on our visions for each individual cause but we are a family and as such support each other in any way we can.
You can read all about one of our collaberative projects in the blog. Each of our three ‘family members’ may have different goals and demographics but we are collectively focused on using art to enhance the lives of as many people as we can.
Visit www.dementiaartstrust.com to find out more about their activities.
Freddie & Mila with their Sunflowers ready to deliver
Collection of artwork donated to Care Homes
Launching the Little Art Stars SCIO – our new children’s charity
Written by Joanne Robinson & Melissa Haddow The launch this week of our children’s charity, the Little Art Stars, has been a spark of joy for us; it has started 2021 with a sense of our moving forward to keep making a difference in our community. The mission of...
During the first lockdown in 2020, the Little Art Stars team co-ordinated sun flower seed planting to provide children in the area who didnt have easy access to outdoor space with a little bit of green for their home. We also ran drawing competitions with all our school partners to keep our schools creating even when we couldnt be in school. We also ran a huge inititiative in the summer with or charity sister Dementia Arts Trust to collect pieces of work from Little Art Stars and Little Art School students which we then donated to Care Homes in the area.
Freddie & Mila with their Sunflowers ready to deliver
Collection of artwork donated to Care Homes
Of course lockdown has had an impact on our Little Art Stars classes. Even when the schools returned in the Autumn, ongoing restrictions around school access meant we couldnt re-start our physical classes in our current partnering schools. With no end to the situation in sight we decided to embrace the technology available to us.
One of our partnering schools very kindly agreed to take part in trials for our Little Art Stars virtual format.
Although these classes have limitations, the students all needed to be supplied with indivual materials so we had to reduce the range of materials and subsequently the lessons, working soley in watercolour pencils.
We also had to reduce the number of students per class and most importantly, the format wouldnt work with members of the school team being our hands on, in the room support.
However, the pupils who took part in the trial classes were absolutly fantastic and reminded us how resilient children really are. We were delighted to be able to engage with some students we have worked with before and see some new faces.
Working with our trial school we have tailored a format that has been successful in letting us continue to support pupils even when we cant be in class with them. While access continues to be an issue we are hoping to extend our Virtual Class programme in 2021.
When our teachers were clearing up after one of the classes they had came across this little character drawn on a piece of warm up paper by one of the students.
Our classes are all about building self esteem and we work hard to give our classes that happy, inclusive environment so finding this little unprompted note during one our first classes was a real boost to know were were going in the right direction.
We think this little dog is too cute to forget so we have big plans for him in the future….
A few of our supporters….
William Duncan & Co
Troon Round Table
STV Children’s Appeal
The Kris Boyd Charity
Barnardos