Help Mint with our creativity, community, youth jobs and growth this year

Mint Artists Guild is on a mission – make that two missions. One serves creative youth and children in Detroit, creating opportunities and launching careers, teaching business skills and more. The second creates more room for art in Detroit, with donated art and art exhibits, Free Art Fridays, free arts and crafts and our growing Art in Windows initiative.

Our mission statement says we “infuse the community with art and creative experiences, enhancing a collaborative, healthy and generous culture.”

To achieve all this, we ask you to support us with a gift or donation, in an amount that works in your life – and theirs. We are launching our spring fundraiser today and need to raise $3,750 to support our creative summer jobs program and so much more.

Here are five reasons to give generously:

• Mint will create its first leadership development training for young creatives and artists, to support their growth as leaders of people and projects. The four-part leadership training initiative is being designed by dedicated volunteers who are experts in career and leadership training.  Lead with Mint will be piloted and tested this summer, and will include original Artist Who Lead video interviews.                [space_20]
• Mint will grow our free arts and crafts to more Detroit parks,

  

  including Patton Park in Southwest Detroit and others as part of the Pistons Neighbors program. We also will return to our home in Palmer Park. This initiative is perhaps three times as big as it was in 2020 and will allow us to hire two new young artists.

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• Mint is committed to hiring more youth this summer – close to 20 young artists creatives between GDYT and the University of Michigan’s Wolverine Pathways Internship. That’s twice the number we employed in 2019 and way ahead of the “Lucky 13” artists in 2020. These young people mainly will work remotely from their homes. We are planning more engagement and more meaningful work projects. They will earn more than $21,000 in pay this year – which accounts for a third of our annual budget – and use that buy computers, art supplies and so much more. And if we achieve our fundraising goal, Mint will pay a couple of them to create a public art  mosaic and donate it to Palmer Park.[space_20]
• We plan to organize at least three Art in Windows

  

  events – in Grandmont Rosedale starting later this month, in Hamtramck in August and on Livernois in October. This initiative highlights independent Black- and women-owned companies, celebrates youth creativity and encourages people to explore neighborhoods and connect again, safely.[space_20]

• Despite the complexities and stresses of covid, Mint has built capacity – much of it through dedicated volunteers and bootstrapping projects. In the last year, we launched the Metro Detroit Youth Arts Competition, which starts year 2 soon. We debuted our first calendar, designed by a volunteer, and our first coloring card, with help from our new marketing intern. We partnered with Arts & Scraps and Brilliant Detroit to develop and distribute 5,500 creative activity kits to children and teachers in Detroit – an idea that originated with Mint.

  

  We are training and supporting several youth artists how to create commissioned pieces. And we are helping young professionals see the power and impact they have as volunteers with our nonprofit.[space_20]

Our spring fundraiser is about creating opportunities – for our youth to learn and grow and give back through art. Its tagline: “Hundreds of paintings. Thousands of hours. Unlimited futures” refers to all the paintings Mint has donated to other nonprofits over the last five years and the thousands of hours of learning and paid work we’ve provided youth.

“Mint is our kids’ future,” said Hubert Massey, Mint co-founder and an acclaimed Detroit artist. Youth learn so much and create art for Detroit and Detroit nonprofits, he said in a Mint video. “It brings a lot of peace. It brings kids together. It brings all people together. “

In coming weeks, we will share some of our young artists’ perspectives on Mint’s value, through videos and in social media posts.  Here’s Mint’s Eleanor Aro who says: “It’s really helped my confidence and my artistic skills grow.”

Mint relies on this spring fundraiser to support our efforts to give back through jobs – including two teaching artists and two team leaders for the summer – and in community art and so much more. So please donate now in any amount that you are able. (Or if it’s easier give us art supplies or more from our wish list.)

Your gift will help create a meaningful summer and beautiful futures.