About the Art Supply Community

Its no secret that going to college is a costly affair. Attending college and paying for supplies often requires a careful balance of school and work. The balance becomes precarious when its time to fulfill an internship, most of which are unpaid. With these factors, the financial burden caused by the cost of essential art supplies can become hard to bear.

This is where the Art Supply Community (ASC) comes in. The goal of ASC is to create a network of students and teachers who can drop off art supplies they are no longer using as well as pick up supplies they need. ASC employs space on campus as well as online to provide an easy to use resource for students. Ultimately ASC improves the college experience for students, providing a cost effective and efficient way to procure the items needed for classes and projects.

The problem students are facing is the need for particular art supplies changes every quarter. Often the supplies students buy for one quarter become useless in the next. Art supplies in usable condition will either sit in a drawer or get thrown away, ultimately becoming a waste of resources and money. However, what is useless to one person can be essential to another. We dont have to throw away these perfectly good supplies that we no longer have use for. ASC will connect people so they are able to locate the items they need for free and give away the still useful supplies they dont need.

Overall, the goal of this resource is to create a model that can fit into any school or community in order to ease the financial burden of students and artists. The ASC model is meant to be easy to implement, to be convenient for the users and administrator. Starting at The Art Institute of Seattle ASC hopefully will grow to help students and teachers in the greater Seattle community.