Registered Charity – SC050412
Our Mission is to provide Structured Art sessions, in a variety of settings in Ayrshire, 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 Christmas Hamper Raffle is back!!
100% of all ticket sales will go towards providing more art classes to more children across Ayrshire! Buy your ticket now for only £5.00 – Winner will be drawn on Friday 15th December.
The hamper includes a Little Art School Paint & Prosecco Evening, a little Art School Children’s Party and many more lovely products from local companies. The complete hamper will be on display at our Christmas Fair at the Robert Burns Heritage Museum on Thursday 30th November. Come along between 6.30 and 9.00pm to browse the stalls of local makers, enjoy some festive music and take advantage of the special offers available in the museums gift shop.
Little Art Stars Scholarships
Our Scholarship programme is designed to support vulnerable children in Ayrshire by funding a space for them to attend Little Art School studio classes.
We are committed to ensuring that when a child enters our Scholarship Programme we can continue that support for the full span of the Little Art School course – this has a potential to be over 12 years.
Little Art Stars in Schools
The Little Art Stars In-School programme supports children who would otherwise be unlikely to access Little Art School 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.
Our In School programme…
We provide art classes, in schools across Ayrshire, 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.
Our classes deliver the “Little Art School” highly structured syllabus that is taught in all Little Art School studios.
Our teachers 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.
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.
The benefits…
The benefits…
– Improving motor skills and self esteem
– Enables students to engage with family and their school community
– Provides an inclusive, friendly, trustworthy and nurturing environment
– We are continually developing existing and new relationships with schools, spreading our reach
– We anticipate long-term growth in the demand compassionate services for vulnerable children allowing them to build in all aspects of their lives
– Improving motor skills and self esteem
– Enables students to engage with family and their school community
– Provides an inclusive, friendly, trustworthy and nurturing environment
– We are continually developing existing and new relationships with schools, spreading our reach
– We anticipate long-term growth in the demand compassionate services for vulnerable children allowing them to build in all aspects of their lives
“I’m going to hug my picture all day”
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.
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.
We are committed to ensuring that when a child enters our Scholarship Programme we can continue that support for the full span of the Little Art School course – this has a potential to be over 12 years which means each Scholarship Student could require up to £4000 in funding.
Sponsor A Child
Sponsor A Child to attend our Little Art School studio classes – whether you know a child that you think would benefit from our Scholarship whom you would specifically like to support or you would just like make a general contribution to the programme we would love to hear from you – get in touch with us to find out more – hello@littleartschool.co.uk.
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.
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...
“Mia has loved being part of this class. She has learned so much about how to draw and her confidence has grown heaps”
Ways you can help…
If you would like to help us continue delivering our life enhancing Art Classes and extend our reach, please read on to find the best opportunity for you to get involved. Alternatively, you can donate easily through Just giving – all donations received through Just Giving will be spread across our projects – if you want your support to go to a specific project just let us know – hello@littleartschool.co.uk
Amazon Smile
By signing up to AmazonSmile and selecting Little Art Stars as your chosen charity you will be supporting us with every purchase you make at no added cost to you.
For more information go to – About AmazonSmile: Programme details and FAQ
Fundraise for Us
We will share any fundraising events we are taking part in as a charity across our social media platforms
Follow our Facebook, Instragram & Twitter to get all the updates you need to get involved or if you are undertaking an activity or event that you would like Little Art Stars to be a beneficiary of please get in touch – hello@littleartschool.co.uk
Or why not shop with the Little Art School?
From every purchase of these products from our store a percentage of profits goes to Little Art Stars
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….
