Both my girls love to draw, “do making” and generally get creative. Jessica, in particular, can be quite prolific. Every day she brings home new pictures for me in her school bag. I keep a few key pieces in the girls’ artwork folders but I can’t keep it all. Sometimes I take photos of the children’s creations but it’s difficult to keep track of them in amongst all the other photos I take. I was recently contacted by Children’s Art Galleries – an online art gallery for children’s creations – and invited to create a gallery each for the girls where I could store their artwork and look back on it.
Children’s Art Galleries is the UK’s first art gallery for kids. It aims to encourage children to be more creative and provides a place where photos of their pieces of artwork can be uploaded and saved. The images are moderated before they appear on the site to ensure that they are suitable for children to view. Other visitors to the site, such as family and friends, can see the images once they are approved. Children can also view other children’s art galleries to help inspire them.
Prices start from £3 per year for a gallery for one child. Each child’s gallery shows their first name only, their location and any bio that you choose to add for them. There are options for sharing the images on social media but no option to make contact through the site to help make it safer for children to use the site.
The artwork submitted to the site is not judged in any way but reward certificates are issued for productivity. Children receive the bronze certificate for uploading 50 pieces of artwork; silver for uploading 150 images and gold for 250. The site also hopes to offer parents the option of creating an album of their child’s artwork in the future.
Children’s Art Galleries sent the girls a box of craft items to help them produce their first piece of artwork for the gallery. The theme for this was “this is how I feel today”. Both girls decided that they felt happy and got busy creating with the various items in the box. Having things to stick on to the paper is always a winner. Foil, ribbons, pompoms and feathers feature in both of their final pictures.
We’ve also added a few more pieces of artwork to the girls’ galleries. I have saved a couple of these in their artwork folders but the rest ended up in the recycling bin. Having them in the gallery together makes it much easier to look back on them. It also helps me see how Jessica and Sophie’s creative skills develop over time.
I received a subscription to the Children’s Art Galleries for both the girls and a box of craft items to help them get creative. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
What a lovely lovely idea – I’ve not heard of this before but definitely fulfilling a need here off to investigate further – thanks for linking this up to #coolmumclub lovely xoxo
It’s such a good idea for helping to keep the artwork images without getting overwhelmed by all the paper versions! 🙂
This is a good idea! I’ve always believed in trashing the original artwork after taking their pictures. Some go up on the wall and most of them accumulate into giant heaps that get trashed from time to time. This especially works for younger kids where the process is so much more important than the product. The product could be a bunch of squiggles, who knows, but the time they invested in it and the fun they had is all that matters. Do share at #practicalmondays, would love to see your posts there too!
#coolmumclub
Creating the artwork is definitely the best bit as far as my girls are concerned. We keep a few on display for a while but the vast majority of it gets put in the recycling fairly quickly. Thanks for letting me know about #practicalmondays too, will have to check it out.
Brilliant. I just love the look of sheer concentration. Creating art work of any kind is a serious business.
I think there’s nothing better and obviously your girls are big fans too.
Thanks Neesie – love how much they enjoy being creative 🙂
Oh this is a nice idea. I have to admit we only keep the best bits of art work they produce, there’s just not space for it all!
Nat.x
Definitely not enough space to keep everything! I only keep a few bits – nice to have something like this where you can save the images of the artwork though.
Such a good idea! I have kept some things over the years, but they do take up a lot of space very quickly (especially when you have five kids!!) I will take a look at this site.
Oh yes, I can imagine – I get overwhelmed with artwork with just two!
This is a great way to store images but what will you do with the originals? #coolmumclub
Most of the originals end up in the recycling to be honest!