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This Year's Project: Accessible Art for Young People
About Our Organization
Our mission is to engage the mind and inspire the spirit through the arts.
The Le Mars Arts Council established recognition as a nonprofit in 1973. It acquired the Andrew Carnegie Library of Le Mars in 1976. In successive years it has established partnerships with area business and the Le Mars Chamber of Commerce. It has hosted prestigious international exhibiting groups, and regularly features exhibits of regional and national artists in it's galleries along with providing a sales space for them. The Center provides art programming for adults and children, which includes art classes, childrens exhibits, art/design appreciation, and storytelling for preschoolers. It also hosts art programming for other organizations that foster development in children, such as the YMCA, Central Dance Academy, and Guardian Angels Preschool. Through fundrasining, the Council was able to upgrade the Carnegie facility to accomodate handicap accessability for gallery space, and classrooms.
Current Project: Accessible Art for Young People
At the Le Mars Arts Center, we are the hub of art creation and viewership for our ever growing and ever changing community. Our goal with the Siouxland Big Give is to increase accesibility to the arts in all of Siouxland. By partnering with us, you can help provide affordable art education to young people all year round! Funds donated will provide materials, courses, and experiences related to the arts to all young people within our community and outside! We look forward to the opportunity to parner with you.
Program produces aptitude, skills and products in the following areas:
Practical coatings, paints, stains, varnishes, heat glazes
Printing concepts and language
Chemical behaviors of coatings and materials
Spacial Planning
Tool Use
Object Construction
Fiber Manipulation, needle craft, object fastening, dyes
Digital art application seminars
Paper bonding, Adhesives
Book-building and binding
Child Focus Program
Project Details
Correspondance with parents over the last year has impressed upon center staff and the Le Mars Arts Council to create an ongoing after school art program. Inspiration for this comes from a few different places. Many parents feel that visual arts programming in the schools has become primarily digitial. And some parents express the desire for their kids to engage in activities that require less screen time. Additionally, some parents would like an alternate social setting for their kids that is beyond school and sports, where their kids can learn new skills, be creative, gain confidence, and meet new friends in a different space.
The Challenge for the Le Mars community is to make this programming accessable to local kids by keeping this programming more affordable than what a for-profit academy would offer. The United Way and the Le Mars Walmart have been our first contributers in meeting this callenge. It is our hope that others in Siouxland will support this effort as well. The first $1,000 in donations will be matched by Red Shed, LLC.
The Le Mars Arts Center Child Focus Program provides time and inclusive space in the center for children to be guided in affordable creative activities and art/ design appreciation. A haven for kids who might be experiencing social or developmental challenges in regular school settings, it can also be a place for kids who are wanting increased confidence and positive experience in skill developing, fun activities.
Program produces aptitude, skills and products in the following areas:
Practical coatings, paints, stains, varnishes, heat glazes
Printing concepts and language
Chemical behaviors of coatings and materials
Spacial Planning
Tool Use
Object Construction
Fiber Manipulation, needle craft, object fastening, dyes
Digital art application seminars
Paper bonding, Adhesives
Book-building and binding