For kids from low-income environments, arts education — in the form of museum trips or music and dance lessons — is often out of reach. Sometimes low-income neighborhoods don’t even have a decent public library. Asmaa Walton is trying to help fix this problem.
A graduate of Michigan State University and NYU’s Tisch School Of The Arts, Walton has a deep passion for arts education. She founded The Black Art Library, “a collection of books on Black visual art (children’s books, exhibition catalogs, biographies, etc.) intended to be an educational resource to share within the Black community and beyond.”
The Library will be based in her hometown of Detroit, MI and she’s already received incredible support for the project. To help get Black Art Library started, she launched a GoFundMe and has raised nearly $9,000 of her $35,000 goal.
“The Black Art Library will be a place local students can come to do research for a project, self-taught artists can come be inspired by images that they see between the pages, and art lovers can spend a day falling in love with the work of an artist they had never even heard about before,” Walton said.
She also won a grant from Detroit SOUP, “a microgranting dinner celebrating creative projects in Detroit.”
Since earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Arts Education, Walton has worked in museums across the country. She now hopes to use her passion and experience to help children from her home city develop love and appreciation for the arts.
