Veterans’ Clay Project at Odyssey ClayWorks. Photo courtesy of All Together Art
By Natasha Anderson
All Together Art (ATA) is a new Asheville-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing quality arts education and services to underserved communities. Founded in September 2022, ATA’s mission is to enhance and enrich the lives of under-resourced people by providing quality art instruction and experiences at little or no cost to them, engaging and embracing them in the WNC community of artists.
“Asheville has an incredibly vibrant creative community, but art instruction is beyond the financial means of many people,” says ATA founder and board chair Brandon Slocum. “We want to make it accessible to them.”
Photo courtesy of Odyssey Clayworks
The idea for ATA was born when Slocum, a humanist chaplain and former Air Force spouse, became involved with the Veterans’ Clay Project at Odyssey ClayWorks last spring. This free program for veterans and their families was created four years ago by Odyssey’s director Gabriel Kline.
“During COVID, all funding for the program was cut, and Gabriel was self-funding to keep it going,” says Slocum. “Having spent most of my working life in nonprofit arts, and being committed to accessibility for all, I set out to form a new nonprofit organization.”
The result was ATA, which funded the fall veterans’ class at Odyssey, threw a holiday party for the participants and provided a scholarship for one student to continue studying at the ceramics school. ATA has partnered with Odyssey to develop more programs, including an eight-week LGBTQIA+ Teens Ceramic course for ages 13 to 16 beginning March 26, and scholarships for ten children to attend the school’s Summer Clay Camps. The ceramics course is funded by Blue Ridge Pride’s Community Partners grant and the scholarships are the result of ATA’s inaugural fundraiser with Odyssey, The Great Pottery Throwdown, which took place in February.
“As a for-profit business, we pride ourselves on the role that we can play in the community, but it is difficult for us to get funding for free programs so we often run them out of our own back pocket,” says Kline. “We are excited to partner with ATA as our fiscal sponsor, and their status as a 501(c)3 nonprofit allows them access to grant money for which Odyssey is not eligible.”
Future projects for ATA and Odyssey include free art classes for the visually impaired, women escaping domestic abuse and elders in long-term care facilities. The organizations also plan to offer classes in Spanish and to launch a campaign to purchase wheelchair-accessible pottery wheels.
ATA also recently formed a partnership with Asheville’s CARING for Children to provide services to kids in foster care and hopes to partner with other organizations in all arts disciplines as it grows.
More programs and classes will be announced on an ongoing basis. Learn more and register at AllTogetherArt.org.
