Veterans Healing Arts Program

This program brings Veterans, artisans, and behavioral healthcare specialists together to teach and benefit from craft as a form of therapy for PTSD, depression, and anxiety, as well as to create an economic incubator for Veterans’ skills following the workshops. Program offerings will be free of charge for Veteran participants.

Rural Youth

In order to provide the rural youth of our area with hands-on experience in a broad variety of crafts, we have shifted our youth programming into junior-level versions of adult workshops with our master artisans at ACS. We are offering these workshops on a “Pay What You Can” basis and will offer full scholarships for students with economic hardships. A current sponsor for this program includes Stone Bank. 

Diversity & Access

We are committed to moving with intention and action toward bringing diversity to our board, staff, students, and instructors. We have begun with rebranding and are following through with recruiting individuals that are in alignment with these goals. We aim to engage a wide range of potential students with offerings at ACS.

We also hope to be able to offer scholarships based on "underserved" criteria across state, regional, national and private funding agencies’ application processes. These criteria include: under 18, over 65, Veterans, disabled individuals, anyone not self-identified as Caucasian for our region, LGBTQ students, and low-income students. We believe that utilizing craft as a way to diversify the culture and economies of North Central Arkansas will aid in the sustainability of our organization and our region.