Originally published in Island Ad-Vantages, October 9, 2014

Haystack Mountain School of Crafts recently received two grants supporting two of the school’s programs for Maine teens. The Maine-based Quimby Family Foundation awarded $20,000 to support Haystack’s 2014 Studio Based Learning and 2015 Student Craft Institute programs—each program received $10,000. A $7,000 grant, from the Parker Poe Charitable Trust, also supported Haystack’s 2014 Studio Based Learning program, according to a news release.

Studio Based Learning, now in its 20th year, provides an opportunity for students to participate in workshops in craft media taught by leading artists from the region. 2014 workshops included: blacksmithing, book arts, clay, musical instrument-making, metalsmithing, and textiles.

For more than 30 years, more than 2,000 Maine high school students have attended Haystack’s Student Craft Institute. This program, which is offered in May, brings together more than 70 high school juniors—identified by their teachers as particularly gifted in the arts—from as many different high schools throughout Maine.
The Student Craft Institute provides a place for students to experience a sense of the creative community in Maine and introduces teens to a broad range of creative methods and to working artists, who demonstrate that careers in the crafts can be a viable profession and lifelong pursuit.

Haystack is an international, nonprofit, studio program in the arts offering summer workshops to craft-makers and visual artists of all skill levels led by prominent faculty artists, and programs for Maine residents in the spring and fall. The school’s award-winning campus, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, is located in Sunshine on Deer Isle, and Haystack’s Center for Community Programs is located at 22 Church Street in Deer Isle village. For more information, call 348-2306, email haystack@haystack-mtn.org, or visit haystack-mtn.org.