ART IS...

 Art is...fun.  inspiring.  creative.  fundraising??

Click on pictures to make them larger.

The Perkins School has embarked on a project with Rightside Shirts.  This young nonprofit company raises money for youth art education by selling t-shirts designed by students.  One hundred percent (that's right, 100%) of the profits are given back to the school to fund art programs and supplies. 

The whole process starts with all our kids drawing or painting or sketching anything they want to.  Here are just a few examples of our kids' contributions.

Jeff and Dylan, the co-founders of Rightside, come to collect the art.  Then they have a hard job as well.  They select five to ten drawings from all these masterpieces as possible candidates for the three(?) to be printed on the t-shirts.  

Normally they would just pick those three themselves.  

We, however, do things the Perkins Way.  

We taught our kindergarteners the basics of democracy by having them vote to name the crane that helped build Phase One of Old Colony.  We reinforced the lesson for Ms. Murphy's second graders when they learned how to campaign, vote, and win or lose gracefully while deciding their class pet.  Now, Leo the leopard gecko is beloved by all.

This time we will have a school-wide election.  We will vote to select which designs will appear on our t-shirts.  Democracy at work.

 Once the t-shirts are made, Perkins kids and our community will be able to buy them for $14, with the profits of that sale feeding our budget for next year's art supplies.

Jeff and Dylan will also decide if one of those designs will go onto the Rightside web site (www.rightsideshirts.org) to be sold to the world!  Again those profits would come back to the Perkins to fund art.

What's going to happen?

Which designs will be voted on?

Stay tuned.