WATCHing ART WORK

As art education benefits have long been heralded for children, popular culture has recently become aware of the real emotional benefits of arts for adults. In Murray, continuing education classes in the arts abound in many venues, while the community choir, band, and theatre are thriving. The benefits of friendship, laughter, stress relief, and a sense of fun and belonging, while seemingly unimportant, are enough to keep these programs going and adults participating, despite their busy lives. In fact, they are the very essence of thriving individuals, families, and communities. But there is one population in Murray that does not have the benefit of these arts programs--the developmentally and intellectually disabled.

W.A.T.C.H., Inc. (WATCH) is the only nonprofit, on-site provider of services for this population in Calloway County, while the Murray Art Guild (MAG) is the only community arts center focused on arts enrichment for the same area. Both organizations have a long-established reputation of financial stewardship and top-notching programming, garnering them the respect of the community. In recent years, these groups came together through a grant for a mosaic project, which began a partnership that became beneficial to both groups, and highlighted a gap in art enrichment that was desperately needed for the WATCH participants.

In order to provide consistent arts enrichment programming to these disabled adults in the Murray community, the Murray Art Guild, with grants from the Community Foundation of West KY and Cliff & Bonnie Higginson, started WATCHing Art Work in the spring of 2021. We hope to grow a long-term, sustainable partnership between WATCH and the MAG, centering around providing arts instruction by the MAG to WATCH participants in order to create handcrafted items, which could then be purchased commercially. This program would not only provide the emotional benefits of creating art to WATCH participants, it would bring further awareness, inclusion, and employment of developmentally/intellectually disabled adults to the Murray community.

Currently WATCH participants, led by MAG Executive Director, Debi Danielson and other volunteers, are meeting twice a month to create different types of projects: dishtowels, pom poms, and seasonal cards. All items are available to purchase in the MAG’s Art Market.