OUR DONATIONS TO CHARITIES
Colart has been running its charity donation for the last 13 months and so far we have helped over 200 charities in the UK, Europe and the US.
Not only are we able to reduce our warehouse space without sending products to landfill, we are also helping to implement Colart’s vision of inspiring every artist in the world. We have donated to schools, including the school that lost 5 children in the Grenfell tower tragedy in London last year, mental health charities, homeless charities and women in prisons and that is just a few of the many we have donated to.
What we weren’t expecting was the impact this was going to have to the user. The feedback has been incredible, and very humbling.
For instance, here is an announcement about Women in Prison regarding our donations.
More feedback on our donations can be found by clicking here.
The next question was ‘How are we going to measure this impact?’ the pictures and thank you notes were great but how were we going to get tangible evidence of the impact of art materials?
COLART AND THE RSA (ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS)
One of the charities we donated to is Paradise Cooperative an educational charity based in Wandworth, London. Our contact for this charity is Brendan Conway who is also a fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).
Brendan has received a grant from the RSA to measure the impact of our donations in a qualitative way and we will be working together to measure the real social impacts of the distribution of our art materials.
As part of this collaboration Lily Hannigan, a Kings College Arts and Cultural Management Graduate, will be occasionally working at the office in London. She will conduct the research by reaching out to all the charities we have helped.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Here is what Brendan Conway has to say about the importance of art in education and the impact of Colart’s donations:
“As an RSA Fellow, school governor and trustee of an educational charity called Paradise Cooperative, I have also been inquiring into how to address this problem [the decline in art-related funds in UK education] in an entrepreneurial way. Last year we linked up with Colart and received a significant amount of quality art supplies which they donated to us and various charities throughout London. Colart, home of Winsor & Newton, Liquitex and other great brands, is based near to the Grenfell Tower in West London. They also donated supplies to the local schools affected by this tragedy.
In the last year we have been redistributing the supplies to schools and have had enormous support and thanks. But does this make a difference? You bet it does. Every child was able to actively participate in our school’s arts week. They used quality supplies for the first time ever. It makes a difference when you are painting on a canvas instead of photocopying paper.
But with this action of distributing art supplies to school it is also important to measure this impact. How do you measure this energy felt during arts week? Colart should at least expect that we can tell them what happened to the supplies. However, if we evaluate the impact through qualitative research we can report to them in a way that will allow us to build a sustainable gifting programme with this and other schools.
So with the help of a grant from RSA Catalyst, Paradise will explore the social impacts of this partnership with Colart and investigate ways we might be able to scale it and enable even more participation in arts across the UK. I know the fellowship is rich with ideas – please get in touch if you want to find out more.”
The Sustainability Team will keep you updated on the research conducted.