Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Statement from Paint Love staff + Board of Directors
Our mission
Paint Love’s mission is to bring extraordinary arts programming to youth facing poverty and trauma.
Art is our vehicle, but the soul of our work is showing children that their voice matters, their ideas are important, and their actions can make a difference in shaping the future. We choose art because creativity is about humanity and expression, imagination and voice- and these things are essential for both dreaming up big ideas and thinking outside pre-existing structures to bring them to life.
This fight is personal because poverty and trauma are both deeply steeped in issues of race.
In Atlanta, our home, and a city with a bold history of civil rights leadership, 76% of Black children live in high- poverty areas, compared to 6% of white children (2019 Annie E. Casey Foundation report).
Trauma can be caused by lots of different things, but one of them is growing up in a society that is pushing you down, telling you you don’t matter, and killing people who look like you, for no reason other than the color of their skin.
Paint Love exists to change the face of trauma response because children deserve better than a society built on bias and upholding archaic systems of oppression.
Our vision
We envision a world where all young people have access to creative opportunities and resources that empower them to imagine and create a future not limited by adverse experiences.
We recognize that the ability to imagine a future at all is something many of the children we serve do not have the luxury of. While Adverse Childhood Experiences impact over 35 million youth of all colors, it is Black children who in addition to the arts, have the least access to quality education, housing, community and health resources.
Take action
Here are just a few of the actions we are taking:
As an organization, we promise to listen to the real needs of our partners in the community and the children we serve, and to acknowledge and fight systematic oppression. We will do this by creating projects that directly address important themes and tell children that they matter. We will provide reliable trauma-informed resources for educators and caretakers, and safe creative spaces for children.
As individuals, we are supporting black artists and donating to causes that uplift black voices and fight racism. We are learning more about the systems of oppression and using art, as well as our voices, and voting power to enact tangible policy change.
We will keep dreaming and keep creating. Art provides an invaluable tool and is essential in the movement of social change. Whether it is protest signs or window displays, stories shared on social media or addressing a national platform, dance or music created from pain or joy, creative expression can expose reality, shift viewpoints, motivate movement, and enact change. There has never been social change throughout history that did not depend on dreamers and creative minds to imagine a new way of being, artists to illuminate the path so that others could see the possibilities of a different future, and bold creators to build systems and usher in a new era of existing.