Thanks to being selected to receive a portion of the final Art Farm scholarship funds this winter, CollabArtive Studios is offering 10 free art classes per month for the rest of this year.

The fund was administered by the R.M. of Weyburn, and was originally raised during the annual event 'Art Farm', held first in 2013 and concluding in 2017.

Co-Owner of CollAbartive Studios, Krystal Glowatski, said you can nominate someone via social media to get a free class.

"People who normally wouldn't treat themselves, who wouldn't normally spend money on themselves, people who are always taking care of other people," she shared.

"Every single month, you'll see our nomination post go up around mid-month and that will allow people to start commenting."

She said they have had 60 nominations this month already, "which is really exciting. Between Instagram, Facebook, and then private messages as well. People sometimes don't want to tag people, they want to just contact us directly. So we have a list going every single month. We select 10 people at random. We try to select new people, though, each month, so that there's more diversity, more people getting an opportunity to take these free classes."

Glowatski said the free class draw is covers any class under $60 that they offer. 

"If you want to take a class over that amount, you just pay the difference, which means that usually you're not paying very much money for a really good high-quality art class."

She said the only stipulation is that the classes need to be used in the same month. "You have to be able to use your nomination win in the month that you were selected." 

"So every single month, at the end of the month, we post our upcoming events for the next month, and people can look at those and choose which class they would like," she noted. "Usually every single month we have between 20 to 30 classes we offer per month, which is a pretty good range. So there's usually something for everybody from watercolor painting to ceramic classes to string art to a paint night, to a growth chart-making night. There's such a wide variety that people can do here, even booking private parties."

She said they were excited to be able to launch this program in May, which is Mental Health awareness month. 

"Art and mental health draw a direct link to each other. Art has been shown to help people with bipolar depression anxiety, like anything and everything, even cancer patients. It's shown to improve their demeanor and their outlook," she shared. "This is hitting home for me right now. My mom is going through a journey with cancer at the moment and I know that she's leaning into her art when she can, when she can get up and when she can get out of bed, and when she can actually sit at the table and do some ceramics or whatever that I know that it's really helping her with the mental aspect of dealing with everything that's going on." 

Glowatski added that their studio has become an art therapy centre in its own right.

"Honestly, people come here all the time and say, 'I'm not able to get into a doctor for eight weeks. Can I just come in here and do some art?' This happens almost on a weekly, if not daily basis. People come in, and I say, 'Hi, how are you today?' And, 'Oh good'. And then they say, 'Actually I'm not good'. And then they tell me this whole story about their surgery that they're waiting for, or their husband that passed, and all these things, and I'm like, 'I didn't even get your name, and it's been an hour and we've been talking and now we're doing art together'. And this is some sort of like community healing capacity that we've created here."
 
Find CollAbartive Studios on social media platforms, like Facebook (HERE).