Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, a remarkable gift totaling nearly $1,000,000 dollars has been made to five of the nation’s leading craft schools — Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (ME), Penland School of Craft (NC), Pilchuck Glass School (WA), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), and Peters Valley School of Craft (NJ).
This anonymous gift was made with the sole intention of providing stipends to teaching artists whose workshops have been cancelled as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. In total over 550 artists will benefit from this support, across the country and internationally, and helps recognize the time spent preparing and planning their workshops. The schools are not retaining any part of the gift; it will all go to our instructors.
Since 2012 Haystack, Penland, Pilchuck, Arrowmont, and Peters Valley have been working together as a consortium to promote craft education on a national level. In recent months we have continued to support one another in new ways, by thinking through the implications of a global health pandemic on our respective organizations and learning from each other as we move through these difficult times. Our partnership and ongoing collaboration has allowed the opportunity to advocate for the artists who are central to our mission and we are profoundly grateful for the unprecedented support we have received on their behalf.
“This gift is truly an act of transformational philanthropy, providing direct support to artists who have experienced a loss of income as a result of the need to suspend programming for the 2020 season, in response to the Coronavirus pandemic”
