A letter from our Founder

The "why" behind Art Feeds Community Garden

Each year, Art Feeds provides access to therapeutic art for around 25,000 children by resourcing the grown-ups who care for them. In the 2025-2026 school year, when resources for education and the care of littles is shrinking across the board, our commitment grows, which is why this year, our goal is to double our giving to 50,000 children and 150 educators in an application process that's easier than ever. So easy it should take less than 10 minutes! You should apply now, because we are giving in the order of application. It's that simple.

I'm miss meg, I started Art Feeds 16 years ago as a 19 year old in one classroom, then and now, our values remain unchanged. I wanted to share a little bit about this decision and our Community Garden.

If you want to skip the story but need the resources for your littles, click any of the links or pictures above or below to take you there. Read on to learn more.

I’ve been thinking a lot about gardens—and their close kinship with creativity. How both foster curiosity, kindness, expansion, connection, and growth.

This year, when I bought native seeds for my flower garden, I mailed the extras to friends. When my sister began germinating vegetables for her own garden, she sent me a myriad of sister veggies to plant in my dirt. When the city ripped up our front lawn to install a glorious new sidewalk, we begged them to skip the sod so we could expand our little patch of native treasures.

When our neighbors noticed the freshly tilled land, they brought over a bounty of native plants propagated from their own yard. My secret plan? To coax the flock of goldfinches away from the library’s bergamot and down into our yard. Once they arrive, the goldfinches and sparrows will eat their fill and—just by being themselves—spread seeds that grow the garden and feed the butterflies and bees.

When I tend the garden, I meet my neighbors. I witness the swallowtail butterfly. I smile and wave at walking strangers. Micro-interactions abound. I feed what I like to call our artist-in-residence box turtle, Evangeline. The sharing is a constant one, that in and of itself, generates more connection and care. Between the goldfinches and the honeybees, between the pollinated and propagated flowers, between me and my community. 

This system doesn’t thrive because any of us (save the bees) are saints. It grows because it’s the culture of the garden—an ecology of generative reciprocity and care. An abundance that blooms not from profit or fences, but from the small, open acts of tending to one another.

In community gardens, everyone puts in the work—tilling, planting, weeding, watering, harvesting—and the whole community benefits. Community garden means community care.

Yet in the current landscape, our greater culture is enacting the opposite. Necessary resources, public protections, and collective care are being relentlessly gutted. The big guys are cutting back. Major corporations are rolling back their philanthropy.

But we at Art Feeds, we are not a “big guy.”

We are something more. We’re a small and mighty garden committed to spreading the seeds of abundance, reciprocity, and care. That’s why this year, we’re doing things differently in how we give.

Children are children everywhere. Since 2009, when we began in a single classroom, we've reached over 250,000 children—through a natural disaster in our hometown in 2011, through expansion across the U.S. to over 20 states, and through international programs in Mexico, Thailand, Cambodia, Ghana, and beyond.

Research shows that process-based art—just 30 minutes a day—can offer free and natural benefits comparable to antidepressant medication. We’ve seen the heartbreak and devastation of natural disasters. We’ve seen children starving in the atrocity of war, children torn from their families, and a staggering rise in anxiety and depression. We know that our evidence based curriculum can help.

As an organization founded and based in the U.S that supports both international and domestic programs, we’ve witnessed critical and life saving programs get cut from nations abroad that need it most, causing widespread suffering for children. While in our backyard domestically, the education landscape has shifted significantly with Title I, II, and IV funding delayed or reduced, deeply affecting resources in-school. All while 21st Century Community Learning Centers funding is frozen drastically affecting essential services for after school programs.

This is not the garden we aim to grow.

Like a seed, creativity, expression, and healing require a supportive environment. All children deserve time and space to feel, to be witnessed, to process, to express. This is a resource Art Feeds has and intends to share. 

All children carry creativity—an abundant resource—when we give it fertile ground.

Apply to be an educator, children's organization staff, caregiver, mental health professional + more to receive free resources of curriculum, training, and art supplies for the littles in your care this year.

Will you join us in planting the seeds?

Apply Here

Love Naively. Give Generously. Be Foolishly Compassionate.
-miss meg and the Art Feeds Team