Community Outreach: How One Non-Profit Helps Youth Find Their Passion in Photography with Sara Keith.
Episode 25: Show Notes.
Unlike many other art forms, photography is a field that is still largely inaccessible due to the high cost of equipment and the difficulty of finding people who are willing to teach. But our guest today, Sara Keith, and her business partner were determined to solve this problem by providing photography education to people from underserved communities in the Metro Atlanta area. In this episode, Sara shares how their dream for the non-profit was realized when they started Illuminate Atlanta and how they partnered up with various institutions to help children discover the joy of photography. For her, one of the most rewarding aspects of her job is watching children find and express themselves through the art form and witnessing its value as a therapeutic outlet since many of these kids face serious social and other challenges. Tuning in, listeners will hear about the range of free downloadable resources they offer and how they can get involved with and support the organization wherever they are!
Key Points From This Episode:
- The education-focused mission of Illuminate Atlanta and how the non-profit was born.
- Why, in terms of education, photography tends to be less accessible than other art forms.
- Using the already-established community space of the Atlanta School of Photography.
- The experience of watching kids find and express themselves through this art form.
- Hear about their programs and how they approach their collaboration with partners.
- Realizing early on that they had to change their teaching style to be more fun!
- Find out how working with teenagers helped them to expand and diversify their curriculum.
- Sara reads an especially meaningful thank-you letter from one of their students.
- The incredible free resources they have on their website and how you can get involved.
Tweetables:
“What we saw with photography is that, over and over again, the two biggest hurdles were having equipment, because it is a pretty expensive art form, unfortunately. Photography has come a long way to be more accessible with things like camera phones and all that but it was still an expense that a lot of organizations could not take on, and then even if they did, they didn’t have anyone to teach it.” — @atl_illuminate [0:03:31]
“Something that we are able to do for our donors is if they do donate a camera, we’ll help to send them a picture and a little description of who the camera went to and what they’re doing and where their donation really has made an impact so they can see it firsthand.” — @atl_illuminate [0:19:42]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Illuminate Atlanta Downloadable Activities
Illuminate Atlanta on Instagram
