Art Road Nonprofit Brings Art Class Back Into Detroit Area Schools

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Detroit (CBS Detroit)

Carol Hofgartner joins Lisa Germani on COMMUNITY CONNECT to talk about how Art Road has brought art class back into five schools, while serving 14,000 students over 15 years.

According to Carol art has left the classroom, not only in Detroit but across the nation, we're in a creativity crisis mainly due to budget cuts.

When kids lack art, they lack the basics. Art is one of our first languages so when we cut out one of our first languages how do we expect to raise the next generation of creatives and thinkers?

I started Art Road because of my friend Lisa a 5th grade teacher, she was teaching in Detroit at a school that is now closed. She asked me to come in a talk about architecture and about my career, so a raced in at lunch time and rolled out some construction documents for the students to see. I talked to them about art that I had done in 4th grade and showed them a painting of a sailboat, and said this is probably just like in your art class. One of the fifth graders stood up and said Ms Carol we don't have art class.

I ended up volunteering for seven years and I knew I could do more, that was the founding basis of Art Road.

We have schools that have quantifiable data that when students have Art Road in their classrooms they don't want to miss school. It's a beautiful gift and blessing to be with young creatives, their just free to create.