The 15th Annual Thea Paves the Way, Thea Foundation’s yearly free community art event, will be held three Saturdays in September and hosted by Malvern National Bank in a distanced event series where school groups, other organizations and families can safely share in a creative community effort featuring vibrant chalk art. Thea Paves the Way began in 2005 as one of Thea Foundation’s first outreach events to engage students and the community in an exciting collaborative art pro

Our partnership with the Arkansas Arts Center for its virtual 62nd Annual Delta Exhibition continues as we highlight more artists who also work as educators. This week, we're proud to feature artist Derek Slagle, who also works as a professor. Derek Slagle, Ph.D. is in a dual appointment position at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Public Affairs as a tenure-track Assistant Professor and Director of the Survey Research Center. He is also an Arkansas Governo

Before the pandemic, Thea Foundation was selected as one of the locations to host a portion of the Arkansas Arts Center’s 62nd Annual Delta Exhibition in collaboration with the Historic Arkansas Museum, ACANSA Gallery, and the Argenta Branch of the William F. Laman Library. Of course, we are now unable to feature the works in our physical gallery, but in conjunction with the Arts Center’s digital reimagining of the exhibition, we’ll be playing an active role to enrich our sup

Beginning in 2014, Thea Foundation initiated partnerships with cultural institutions and arts organizations to amplify existing arts programming in schools. Currently, Arts Reconstruction is our focused effort to help teachers receive professional development. By providing training in new visual arts mediums, Thea Foundation helps enhance lesson planning and subsequently, gives students further exposure to ways in which they can create. In conjunction with the professional de

Thea Foundation will launch its $50,000 Challenge Match with support from the Windgate Foundation on Tuesday, May 5. For several weeks, Thea Foundation has closed its physical doors temporarily and cancelled all public events, including important fundraisers. The organization asks for donations to continue to be a resource for the 33,000 public school teachers in Arkansas as Thea’s Art Closet program aims to still provide $100,000 in art supplies and creative materials for th

Thea Foundation announced today that it has received a $10,000 gift from First Orion, an industry-leading telecommunications company soon to be headquartered just two blocks away from the nonprofit’s Argenta office and gallery in downtown North Little Rock. This extraordinary gift will support Thea Foundation’s statewide programs in advance of its summer initiative to raise funds to help stock Thea’s Art Closet budget prior to the 2020-21 academic year First Orion’s contribut

High school seniors from across the state were asked to submit their work to the 2020 Film Scholarship Competition. Due to the pandemic, Thea Foundation extended the deadline to enter this year's competition. Typically, we award four scholarships in each of the following categories: directing, editing, screenwriting, and cinematography. Since we did not receive any entries in screenwriting this year, our judges from the Arkansas Cinema Society recommended a double award in ci

For Thea’s 2020 Performing Arts Scholarship Competition, we received 140 video submissions from students across the state for consideration. Our competition is usually held in-person one Saturday in March, and we were deeply saddened to not be able to connect with all of the student competitors and their families. Our team is also very grateful to the students who adapted to this year’s competition change to online-only. After careful deliberation by this year’s judges, Thea

For the first time ever, we hosted Thea’s Visual Arts Scholarship Competition completely online. Due to the pandemic, the deadline was also extended, but we’ve officially selected ten winners from the 170 Arkansas high school seniors who submitted their art for consideration. This year’s theme is “Brilliant, radiant, overcoming the senses” and our judges had a difficult time narrowing down their selections because of all of the strong submissions we received. We are happy to

Over the past few weeks, Arkansas arts educators have been at the forefront of our thoughts. Throughout the academic year, one of Thea Foundation's programs (Art Closet) supports teachers through funding art supplies and creative materials, but what happens when educators have to promptly transform their curriculum to online-only? It can be quite the challenge to teach the arts without a physical classroom. In turn, Thea Foundation sought to find a resource to help our state

This academic year has been a special one for Thea Foundation for many reasons as we continue to serve Arkansas teachers and students through our programs. One particular reason has been the inclusion of research support from a truly impressive team of students enrolled at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. Thea Foundation’s practicum team from the Little Rock-based graduate school has gone above and beyond to help research the impact of our Art Clos

For the 2020 Creative Writing Scholarship Competition, more than 90 students from across the state of Arkansas registered to compete. This year's submissions were truly special, and we're so grateful to be able to enjoy the talent of Arkansas students during this trying time all over the world. While the next few months may bring several updates and changes for all students, Thea Foundation would like to send all of our positive energy to the Class of '20 seniors who are cert

Due to a significant interest in submitting art and auditions digitally and Thea Foundation's awareness of the current pandemic, we've opted to take our 2020 Performing Arts and Visual Arts Scholarship Competitions completely online. Please see details below for each competition's new submission process. New Deadlines for Performing Arts & Visual Arts Scholarship Competitions: Extended deadlines to accommodate our talented Arkansas students and the evolving dynamics of the pa

Thea Foundation's annual Fashion Design Scholarship Competition was held on Saturday, March 7. Students from across the state arrived to showcase their designs and discuss their application of this year's theme: brilliant, radiant, overcoming the senses. We're excited to announce this year's winners: 1st Place, $4,000 scholarship Emely Truong (pictured above) Searcy High School Here's a sample of the required drawings Emely brought to discuss her design: 2nd Place, $3,500 sch

Thea Foundation is excited to announce a brand-new offering for supporters to stay involved year-round and receive great perks. Beginning in 2020, becoming a Thea Insider for only $90/year gives you access to four of our Art Department exhibition openings with a special, advance meet and greet with each artist as well as 25% off our annual fundraisers, including Into the Blue and Blue Plate Special. In addition to these event advantages, you’ll receive a quarterly update on o

Supporting Arkansas teachers at the elementary school level is an important element of Thea’s Art Closet program. Last month, we drove a little over an hour outside of Little Rock to Clarendon, where a rural farming community continues to navigate major issues, including poverty. For this particular trip, we sought to visit with Katelyn Dancer, a remarkable teacher at Clarendon Elementary School who has received Art Closet project funding from Thea Foundation since 2016. A re

Last month, we stopped by Christopher Swaty’s art classroom at Robinson High School in Little Rock. Christopher received his second fully-funded Art Closet project at the very start of the school year—he requested supplies to facilitate teaching different forms of printmaking. Through Thea’s Art Closet, public high school art teachers are able to submit a project request valued at $2,500 or less, and Thea Foundation immediately funds half of the project (up to $1,250) while o

In honor of Thea Kay Leopoulos’s birthday and to highlight the foundation’s accomplishments as well as current needs, Thea Foundation will hold its first-ever Thea’s Day of Giving on Friday, December 6. Help us support creative learning for the 478k K-12 public school students and the 33k teachers in Arkansas. Thea Foundation provides the needed art supplies and resources to help equip as many classrooms as our budget permits. We can do more. We need your assistance to inspir

This week, Ballet Arkansas will present two evenings of performances highlighting the choreographic abilities of the company’s dancers in a show titled Debut being held at the Argenta Community Theater. One of the participating dancers/choreographers is Meredith Loy, who is a 2012 Thea Foundation Performing Arts Scholarship recipient. Meredith is in her 5th season with Ballet Arkansas, and we sent a few questions her way to touch base about her community involvement and what

The next installment of the Art Department, a quarterly exhibition series hosted by Thea Foundation, will feature the work of Justin Bryant in an exhibition titled "Myriad Subtleties." The exhibition will be up November 1 through November 26 in the Thea Foundation gallery, and a reception will be held Friday, November 1, 2019, from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. at Thea Foundation, $20 at the door covers heavy hors d’oeuvres by Ben E. Keith, an open beer and wine bar and the chance to win