Our Impact
In its first five years, Follow Your Art Community Studios has made huge strides in building creative community. See below for some examples of the ways we are making creative experiences available to everyone.
Inside The Big Yellow House...
We provide a safe, welcoming, and engaging space for everyone
to find and use their creative voice.
Beyond Our Walls...
We work with organizations, schools, and civic groups
to make the arts accessible to everyone.
It’s not just about painting lessons…
Our small staff works with over 1,000 children, teens, adults, and seniors every year.
We hold more than 200 classes and special events each year in creative writing, visual arts, performing arts, storytelling, and ceramics.
We’ve launched Live from the Living Room with author talks, musical performances, teen coffeehouses, and storytelling nights.
We’ve hosted more than 25 gallery shows and artisan sales highlighting diverse creative voices in our community.
We collaborate with community partners such as the Melrose Commission on Disability, the Melrose Human Rights Commission, the Milano Center, Friends of Melrose METCO, Artists for Humanity, and others.
Since 2020, our downtown mural collaborations with local groups have become a staple, providing community connection and amplifying the work of important organizations.
We mentor and employ dozens of teens through the Create Your Opportunity program for high school youth, supported by a YouthReach grant from the Mass Cultural Council.
Upstairs at the Big Yellow House we provide a creative home to more than 30 artists and writers who work and connect with each other and share their work in the community.
We’ve provided training for educators on creative development in young children and visited multiple schools to share creative programs that complement their curriculum.
We also host dozens of birthday parties each year!
We actively work to make the creative arts more accessible:
- We’ve given more than $25,000 in tuition assistance for families through our Arts for All program, including over $9,500 distributed amongst more than 60 individuals in 2024 alone!
- As part of Massachusetts’ EBT Card to Culture program, we provide assistance to EBT and WIC cardholders.
- We’ve delivered adaptive services to more than 45 families, providing creative fun for people with special needs.
- We hold free and low-cost community events and public art projects, and creative nights for individuals from different affinity groups.
Diversity and inclusivity in the arts is core to what we do:
- We have intentionally built a Board of Directors that is 1/3 people of color.
- Our storytelling series intentionally focuses on the stories of people from traditionally marginalized groups (to date: BIPOC, immigrants, LGBTQIA, individuals who are disabled)
- We’ve contributed to a permanent rainbow crosswalk in downtown Melrose, annual Pride events, an Art and Snacks program for non-cisgendered youth, and other LGBTQIA initiatives.
- We hold annual art nights for survivors of domestic violence.
- We connected Artist Steve Aldeus with Melrose Historic Commission’s Jim Bennett to create a series on the histories of individuals of color in Melrose.
- Our staff work with SEEM Prep, a high school for youth with disabilities, among other organizations to bring creative projects into schools, nursing care facilities, and daycares.
- Through our Portrait Project, teen artists created 10 portraits of influential people of color, people who identify as LBGTQ, and people with disabilities. These portraits now hang in the main hallway of Melrose High School.
- Our Artist as Witness event featured the work of BIPOC artists from across New England that drew over 100 attendees and donors.
