BUCKETS OF LOVE
2020 and 2021
UPCOMING event: May 14, 2022
At Artists for World Peace, LOVE and PEACE begin at home.
As a local Arts organization, we are frequently contacted by families and other members of the Middletown, CT, community. Throughout the 2020 summer months of the COVID-19 pandemic, several parents reached out to Artists for World Peace, expressing disappointment over the cancellation of camps, summer school and recreational programs. One of our Council members, Phyllis Sheridan, met with our Founding Director, Wendy Black-Nasta, to discuss ways that we can address the situation right here in Middletown, Ct. They took their idea to the Council of Elders, and our BUCKETS OF LOVE was born! We set a goal of providing 300 children with absolutely free art supplies, delivered in beach buckets, to keep them entertained and amused. Our BUCKETS were distributed across the community, combating lockdown boredom and supplying basic art materials to families who would otherwise be unable to afford them.
After distributing our 2020 BUCKETS, we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. Likewise, it was quickly apparent that there remained a mass desire for MORE buckets, and in listening to the needs of our community, we decided to repeat this project in 2021. Last May we expanded our project to 450 BUCKETS. With a grant from the Community Foundation of Middlesex County, and a donation from The Art Guild of Middletown, we were excited to expand BUCKETS OF LOVE for the spring of 2021. Now in its third year, we will be hosting this years event on our town green in Middletown on Saturday, May 14th, with a rain date of May 21st. We are expanding our event once again. This year we will include a wonderful hour-long performance and interactive dance with our friends at Friendz World Music, a group of performers from Hartford, CT, that we love to work with. All of the details will be here on our website and on our social media outlets in the near future.
(LINK to BUCKETS OF LOVE 2021)
Thank you to our sponsors:
AFWP Council of Elders
The Community Foundation of Middlesex County
The Middletown Commission on the Arts
The Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development
MONDO MONDO Restaurant (Middletown)
St. Vincent de Paul Middletown
and The Connecticut Office of Humanities
BUCKETS OF LOVE 2020
