Work category

"We want to help anywhere art is being taught by a degreed professional. And in three years, we've served more than 70 programs -- that's more than 100,000 students, tens of thousands of dollars worth of art supplies.But one thing we're doing is using our work to say to principles and schools. Hire a genuine, professional art teacher and we'll help.'

"We're looking for teachers who teach about artists, who do collage, who talk cubism."

Dian Sourelis is af degreed art educator, herself.  She and her business partner founded Brainforest, a design agency in Chicago. They also created what in the United States is often called a "501(c)(3)" -- so-called for the entry in the American federal tax code that allows a certain types of service organizations to function as non-profit tax-exempt organizations and accept donations.

"BFriend," as their community-service 501(c)(3) is known, eventually has become centered on a project named Creative Pitch. And it's that effort which has caught the favor of the INDEX: jury in selecting its finalists for 2009.

"We moved our studio about five years ago," Sourelis says. "And like any creative agency, we had a lot of stuff -- T-shirts, binders, pens, a lot of things we didn't know what to do with. But good material. High quality. And since we're also a sustainable studio, I was looking at this pile and saying, 'This is really good art material.' Since I have a degree as an art educator, myself, I picked it up and took it to the public school down the street. Chicago schools are very needy, like any inner-city schools. And art teacher there was almost in tears, she was overwhelmed. She had no materials to use with her students and there we were, bringing her high-quality art materials.

"Creative Pitch, as we called the effort to get art materials that were being discarded into the schools' art programs, really started to grow.  The name in American English is a play on the "creative pitch" an agency or designer makes to a client for work and "pitch" as a term for throwing out something unwanted.

"Today, this is our main focus in giving something back to the community. Creative Pitch goes along with being sustainable, with supporting education, it gives the design community something to rally around. They really want to serve, and this way they not only can donate materials, but we also do events in which they get to take the art materials to the schools.

“We’re not into craft. We’re not into egg cartons. We’re into art education. High quality materials to well-educated people, anywhere in an underserved population. That now includes art therapy, it includes programs we want to expand to children who are autistic and have special needs, we're going to get materials to kids who are in shelters, temporary housing situations.

"Our main problem is money. People give us materials but the economy isn't great for agencies. Brainforest has donated a thousand square feet of warehouse space to the program.

"Some of the best teachers make the connection for the students between the agencies making these donations and the commercials and ads the students see all the time. And they explain to the students, 'These agencies care about you, they're interested in you, they want to give you these materials so  you can learn.' This helps empowers poor students, it helps them make a connection with the big buildings downtown.

"We were going to try to take this program national, but the liability issues are a problem. And sometimes we get calls from designers in other parts of the country wanting to ship us things here to Chicago -- but that defeats the sustainability factor when you have to use fuel to move the materials around.

"So the plan is that next year, we'll start going around the country and helping people start their own programs for their communities."

Sourelis concedes that times are tight for design firms and other creative agencies. But education budgets have tightened with the economic crunch, as well, "and teachers are being told, 'There's no money for your program so go out and find your own resources." We like the teachers who respond by coming in with a wish list, materials they need for a project they want to do with the students. It's the job of the taxpayers to give them what they need, but unfortunately that's not happening at this point.

"We still have teachers coming in, even if the phones aren't ringing with business."

Designed by:
Brainforest, Chicago, Illinois, United States.

Design team:
Dian Sourelis (program founder and executive director); Nils Bunde (art direction); Drew Larson and Jonathan Amen (logo and materials 
design).

Additional credits:
Lake County Press (printing and fabrication).

www.creativepitch.org

Written by Porter Anderson