Families providing foster care can get a free membership at this museum
Published at | Updated at
IDAHO FALLS — A local museum is offering free memberships to all families providing foster care as a way to let children experience the “healing and transformative power” of the arts.
The Art Museum of Eastern Idaho launched a new initiative called Foster the ARTs on Nov. 1. It’s available to families in eastern Idaho.
“It’s a way of saying thank you to them because they are providing such an incredible service and also making the arts more accessible to those kids in their homes,” said Amy Thompson, development director at the museum.
Thompson helped launch the idea. She said her family spent six years participating in the foster care program before moving to Idaho Falls from Maine.
“We had really great experiences exposing the kids that were in our care to the arts when we lived in Maine. I was involved with an art museum there, and we would take them there, and I just really saw firsthand what a positive effect it had on them,” Thompson explained.
According to its website, the family membership benefits include the following:
- Free admission for one year
- 10% discount in the museum’s gift shop
- Discount on most classes and workshops
- Subscription to the monthly newsletter, MuseNews
- Invitations to exhibit openings and events
“We just think it’s really important, especially for kids that are coming from harder places and that really need the kind of healing and perspective building that can come from the arts,” Thompson said. “We’ve had positive feedback from the community. They are excited about the program.”
A few months ago, Thompson said a social worker came to The Art Museum with a boy and a girl who were both in foster care. She said the boy was looking at a sculpture that had ceramic rods. Thompson asked him if he wanted to see a video of how they put it together.
“He really lit up and had all these questions about it,” she recalled. “The social worker came over to me later and said, ‘I cannot believe that he talked to you. He usually has his hoodie pulled down over his face. He won’t even look anybody in the eyes.'”
She said it was fun to see the boy light up with enthusiasm and curiosity and connect with her. That’s what she hopes to see more of through Foster the ARTs. She said that art can be another form of communication for kids.
“I have taken a lot of our foster kids to the art museum and have seen how looking at art…it almost gives them another way to communicate or another way to think about the world and it really can open them up,” she said.
Thompson encourages people to help spread the word about the program so foster families can take advantage of the memberships.
“I think that foster families can feel really isolated sometimes because it’s such a lot of work and it always comes from a place of heart, right?” Thompson said. “Keep an eye out for the people in your community that are doing that service and look for ways that you can support them and also tell them about this program.”
If you’d like to learn more, click here.
