Adopt a Story Garden and help build community today!
A colorful and welcoming place to sit, a collective time of reading books, and art activities that encourage new discovery and reveal the creativity in children and parents. Story Garden creates a space of peace and learning that brings the community together around books and art in the neighborhoods where such support is most needed.
Story Garden facilitators arrive in the community every week, at the expected time. This consistent presence allows for building long-term and trusting relationships. By using the community places that already exist to reinforce the strengths that a community has, and bringing quality books and art materials that are needed for everyone to participate freely, Story Garden (also called Street Library) creates the conditions for a community to come together. It supports other community institutions and organizations, such as a local library, in their own outreach and programming. Concrete examples for blooming partnerships in Story Garden can be read below.
With these approaches, Story Garden makes an impact in the community:
Working towards something collective, including a communal time of reading
Being open and welcoming to everyone, with an eye to include those who have the hardest time joining
Collaborating with community members and supporting their aspirations
When Street Libraries and Story Gardens become part of the community life, other individuals and institutions are better able to live out their willingness to reach everyone in the community. Here are two examples.
Brooklyn Public Library Bookmobile in Brownsville
For the past two summers a partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library brought workshops and this past year their Bookmobile to the ATD Fourth World Festival of Arts and Learning in Brownsville. The Bookmobile was a huge hit at this year’s Festival, and a success for the library’s program goals. Directors of the Bookmobile were impressed with the outreach to families that the Story Garden has achieved over the years. Now the bookmobile comes to the Brownsville Houses every other week during Story Garden time! Along with reaching the library’s goals of outreach in this community, children and adults at Story Garden get access to the library’s amazing book collection.
“It’s a win-win partnership. I feel we created the space with Story Garden and we offered that space so they could do their own outreach with us, which they weren’t able to do before. It reintroduced books in a new way in our Story Garden too. We now read a book from the Bookmobile together to start Story Garden, have a discussion, and then do an activity related to the book.”
- Virginie Charvon, Story Garden Facilitator
Strengthening Community Spaces in New Mexico
“The link we have to the community is in the places where the community is already gathering. We are one element to make it stronger and create the conditions to bring people together.”
- Inga Ruiz, Story Garden Facilitator
In the small town and rural areas around Gallup, New Mexico Story Garden strengthens these community spaces through collective activities that bring people together, especially those who are most on the outside edges of those spaces. This past spring children and adults at the Gamerco Story Garden collectively learned and practiced watercolor painting techniques over several weeks of different activities. While each person made their own paintings and advanced their personal skills, they did so alongside their neighbors, and each contributed an art piece to the collection that was exhibited in their neighborhood and at the Gallup Flea Market. Neighbors who often have a hard time joining community events made it out to celebrate their children and grandchildren’s achievements during the art show.
This collective learning continues in Gamerco with Story Garden participants now working on developing drawing skills! Creative weekly activities will continue to introduce and allow children and adults to practice various drawing techniques. As the learning advances, they will display their artwork for all community members to view, acknowledge, and celebrate together.
Here are a few ways your contribution makes a difference. Thank you!
$50 - contributes to drawing and art materials for one weekly Story Garden in New York City or New Mexico ($100 contributes to one in each place!)
$200 - supplies art materials and local transportation for community artists at Festivals of Arts and Learning
$500 - helps with travel expenses for the mobile Story Garden on Wheels to visit families living in rural areas 2-3 hours outside of Gallup, New Mexico
$1000 - covers the monthly stipend for a full-time team member facilitating Story Garden