Meet Aida, Bryce, Colin, Earicka, Hasina, Jade, Jalin, Laila, Lauren, Nate and Ruth. They are sixth, seventh and eighth graders from Sutton Middle School in Atlanta, Georgia, who share one thing in common: they love photography.
In fact, they love it so much that they spent seven weekends in the fall of 2015 studying the art of capturing an image, trudging around a 150-year-old industrial complex with an Instax camera and a box of film. All thanks to an initiative called Future PhotoMakers, a project dedicated to addressing the lack of arts funding in Georgia and inspiring a new class of creative people along the way.
"Future Photomakers emerged out of a need that we saw in Atlanta public school arts funding which has been drastically decreasing for years," program creators Tim Lampe and Keith Weaver explain online. "It’s no secret that the state of Georgia sits at the bottom of the pile in this category and that there is an incredible need for children’s art programming."
Atlanta might be a hub for music and creativity, but Georgia ranks pretty low in terms of its public arts funding. According to data from 2015, it gives less per resident to the arts than any other state -- approximately 6 cents. In comparison, fellow Southern states like South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee give 63 cents, 61 cents, 82 cents and $1.07, respectively.
Lampe and Weaver launched Future PhotoMakers with these abysmal statistics in mind. They submitted a proposal to the VSCO Artist Initiative in 2014 and -- upon receiving funding and support -- reached out to Sutton art teacher Erin Ray the next year. Over the course of a month, Ray connected the two with 12 students from Sutton who would go on to become the first group of Future Photomakers. They found a home in Atlanta’s Goat Farm Arts Center, where Lampe, Weaver and the dozen middle schoolers spent three hours every week learning the ins and outs of making photos.
Fast forward to March of 2016, and the Future PhotoMakers are showcasing the fruits of their labor. The exhibition will take place at the same Goat Farm, where the students' photographs will be on view and on sale. All proceeds from the show will go directly to the Sutton art program for future projects at the school. For most of the students, this will the first time they have shown artwork in a public place.
Compared to the 51,500 students enrolled in Atlanta public schools in the fall of 2015, the 12-person Future PhotoMakers initiative may be small, but Lampe and Weaver consider even the smallest effort to combat lack of arts funding a win. Meanwhile, PhotoMakers is just one of the projects funded by the VSCO Artist Initiative, a group that provides artists with an array of resources and grants, no matter the medium.
"In our own small way we want to make a difference in the lives of kids and pass along our passion for photography and storytelling to this next generation of image makers," Lampe and Weaver state online.
"Our goal was to inspire these kids to pick up a camera, make pictures, have fun, and share their world," they added on Facebook. "The program was a huge success and now we're excited to celebrate that collective work and the creativity of each of these wonderful kids."
See a preview of the Future PhotoMakers' work (below), along with more images from the program. For more information on the March 6 exhibition, check out the event page on Facebook.
Note: All instant images were taken by the students of Future PhotoMakers.
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