Second saturdays = Creativity Kits at Crossing Arts!

Creativity Kits began as a way to inspire and uplift during the tough times of isolation and uncertainty as the COVID-19 pandemic changed our day to day lives. It has become a bright spot each month in the lives of many young people in our community.

Each Creativity Kit is packed in a bag adorned with a collectible postcard with artwork by a local artist, along with art supplies and projects to feed their creative souls. Check out the news articles and interviews, and the text below, to learn more about this project.

Press About Creativity Kits

WJJY Interview | Brainerd Dispatch Article

KAXE Interview | MPR News Article

want to help?

• Donate - Help us purchase more bags and art supplies to fill our Creativity Kits. For $5 you can provide a Creativity Kit to someone in need. Donate HERE!

• Sponsor - Interested in sponsoring a distribution and helping us get more Creativity Kits out into our community? Contact us for more details.

• Create A Bag - Are you an artist/author that would like to help with this project by providing some creative work for the bags? Contact us for more details.

Creativity kIts for Classrooms & Youth groups

Would you like to occasionally have enough Creativity Kits for your classroom, after school program, or other youth group / program? We often have extras after Second Saturday giveaways, and we’d love to get them into classrooms of kiddos!!

Sign up here and we will work hard to get you enough kits for a group project whenever possible.

Our storage space is limited so you must be able to pick-up your kits at Crossing Arts in a timely manner.

Would you like order enough Creativity Kits for your classroom or youth group to receive regularly? Contact us to discuss details pricing.

Thanks for supporting art and creativity in children in our community! 🩵

We LOVE inspiring our community with Creativity Kits.

Check out this video from a Creativity Kit giveaway in June of 2020.

Samples of past Creativity Kits below, decorated with collectable art cards.

Born in the middle of a pandemic, but too important to quit.

Since April 2020, we have distributed more than 16,000 Creativity Kits to people in our community right out our front door, through the Full Tummies program, to the Mid Minnesota Women's Center, the YMCA, local schools, social workers working with displaced children, PORT Group Homes, Kinship Partners, and through community partners like Employment Enterprises in Little Falls and others.

The projects in each bag help to expand our community’s artistic literacy and have an enormous impact. We hear from many who look forward to this Second Saturday activity so they can work on a project with their kids or grandkids. For some, the kits provide tools and supplies they wouldn't be able to afford otherwise. For others, the projects introduce them to new art forms that excite and inspire them, and over and over we hear about the joy that these creative projects give to young and old, through the pandemic and beyond. Creativity Kits enable us to provide arts education in a bag to more children than we can reach in a classroom setting.

Putting the kits together is no small task. Our staff develop the projects, create the instructions, and source the materials, and then a team of volunteers help to affix the postcards to the front and assemble the bags.

We are so grateful for the support of so many members, and corporate and community sponsors who have donated to support this project through the years. Thank you for helping us share the joy of creating each month!