Creativity Shell Awarded NEA Grant to Challenge America to Sew a Little Love!
Nonprofit organization, the Creativity Shell has been awarded a prestigious $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to launch a multi-state sewing project that will challenge Americans to Sew a Little Love.
The Creativity Shell is on a mission to use creative trades to educate and inspire the next generation of makers. The organization teaches sewing/textile arts and other trades classes to students in their private studios, libraries, schools and shelters that rescue children from homelessness, trauma and human trafficking. Their classes are designed to educate and inspire children by teaching them essential life and practical skills.
Established by Congress in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts is the independent federal agency whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector, the Arts Endowment supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America.
The Sew a Little Love community project will be a series of community quilts where quilt blocks are made from a person’s hand that is traced and cut from fabric. Each hand will be as unique as its owner and will have an additional heart shaped fabric sewn into it with a handwritten message if desired. In total, the Creativity Shell plans to make 100 quilts and will need around 7,200 people to participate. Once the quilt hand blocks are made, they will be sewn into quilts. If any entity such as a school, city or organization in America needs love or support during difficult times, they can request a Sew a Little Love quilt to be loaned out to them for a period of time. Quilts will also be hung in libraries across the country so we can always remember how amazing it is to work together as a community.
Grant funding will allow the Creativity Shell (and their mobile sewing studios Jerry and Sherry) to travel to rural parts of Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma to sew with low income students and give them the opportunity to be a part of this community project.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support grants throughout the entire country that connect people through shared experiences and artistic expression,” said Arts Endowment Chairman Mary Anne Carter. “These projects provide access to the arts for people of all abilities and backgrounds in both urban centers and rural communities.”
If you would like your school, business, shelter or organization to participate in the Sew a Little Love project, please contact sdaniel@creativityshell.org or click here to order a Sew a Little Love fabric kit.
