On Dian Sourelis’ Christmas wish list are such non-traditional items as pens, markers, paint, and collage materials such as toothpicks, buttons, feathers, carpet square and Christmas wrapping paper.
Her company’s non-profit Creative Pitch will collect and donate these oddments and other types of creative supplies to public school art programs for underserved children.
“Call it a food bank without food,” says Sourelis, the business-side partner in Brainforest, a multi-award-winning strategic design and creative agency in Bucktown.
With all too many Chicago elementary school teachers allowed less than a dollar per student to buy paper and other creative classroom supplies, Creative Pitch fills an almost bottomless need.
Ad and design agencies, interior designers and paper mills are urged to donate?and not discard?their old, unused and overstocked supplies. Creative Pitch then recycles the supplies according to the needy schools.
Since it began as a one-time, three-day drive in January 2006, Creative Pitch has benefited more than 30,000 students from 40-plus Chicago schools.
With word spreading about the program, combined with the teachers’ lack of storage space to stock up once or twice a year, the program now operates year-round.
Donations can be anything useful for an art project
