By Andrea Mulder-Slater
Promise: [a cause for hope; grounds for expectation of success, improvement, or excellence]
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A blank sheet of paper and a tray full of oil pastels offers children the promise of something new, something unknown and something potentially amazing.
A blank sheet of paper offers hope.
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When my mother Jantje and I created KinderArt in 1997, we were leading children’s workshops at a local art gallery. One day we decided to look online see if there were any resources for art teachers and found that there were very few (hello Ken Rohrer and The Incredible Art Department!). Not long before, we had made the move into “cyberspace” by placing our Art Studio business online. So, along with that, we created what was at that time a modest resource for art teachers, with about 20 art lessons.
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The name KinderArt® came a few months later and it didn’t take much longer for us to be discovered.
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As more and more visitors started coming to our little website, it became clear that there were many artists, teachers and parents who, like us, were on the lookout for new ideas that didn’t cost a fortune to try with large groups of children.
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So, we continued to build the site, adding quick lessons as well as more in-depth drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture studies. Our main concern was to offer ideas that make use of readily available materials that most parents and teachers have at home or in their school supply cupboards. Eventually, those who were visiting the site wanted to share their ideas as well, and so, the site continued to grow.
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Today, more than 20 years later, KinderArt is home to a huge variety of art lessons, articles, resources (and more), and to date, we’ve had more than 70 million visitors make use of our collection. In addition, we’ve been able to turn our dream of an art teaching membership into a reality with the launch of The KinderArt Club nearly one year ago.
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All of this thrills us of course, because it means that children world-wide are taking part in life-changing activities that will shape their futures in a positive way.
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The goal of KinderArt® has been and always will be, to make art lessons accessible to those who need them. We’ve been doing it for more than 20 years and we’ll continue to do it for many more.
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That’s our promise to you.
Thanks for coming along for the ride.
~Andrea
