In Focus: MacRostie Art Center Hosts “Family Creates” 2nd Saturdays

The 2^nd Saturday of the month is all about family at the MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids. Their free “Family Creates” events have been going for about a year and a half now, and they just keeping getting more popular as time goes on.

“What you’re seeing is all of the kids working with their parents or guardians or what-have-you to accomplish the task of making an ornament, whether that’s a giant snowflake or it’s a mini Santa Claus,” say Whitney Leming-Salisbury, the communications director for the MacRostie Art Center.

The events were created to promote interaction between family members. They work together on whatever the task of the day is, and through that process, they really get to know each other.

Leming-Salisbury says, “We started talking about how it gets parents and kids to work together. We found that’s a really, really important process when it comes to engaging a creative community is to get parents and kids working together, interacting together. Whether it’s reading instructions together or really overcoming a challenge together, it creates a bond and also an end product that ends up being really really cool.”

The activities change each month, so you never know what the challenge of the day will be.

Abby Carlson, a mother, says, “We’ve done anything from planting and painting flower pots to making different projects with butterflies in the summer and then, this is one that we have done before – the snowflake ornament.”

Parents are getting to know their kids, but it’s also a great opportunity to meet other parents and their kids as well.

“My favorite part is just having such a fun project set up for us already and that we can just come as a family and just dive in, have fun, not worry about a mess and not worry about having to set it up at home, and also being able to come with friends and other people in the community,” says Carlson.

The events show no signs of stopping, and that’s why MacRostie is looking for new ways to keep them growing. In the future, they’re planning to reach out to other artists.

“We’re really excited to collaborate with local artists and start, I don’t know, making our activities a little bit more art centered and art focused and traditionally focused,” says Leming-Salisbury.