This week, Al visits Gloria Walsh, Manager of Creative Kids, a charitable organization dedicated to removing financial barriers for Saskatchewan children aged 4 to 19 to participate in arts and culture. From its inception in 2007 to its growth and community impact, discover how Creative Kids has enriched lives and fostered cultural appreciation among the youth. Learn about their struggles, successes, and future aspirations.
This week, Al visits Gloria Walsh, Manager of Creative Kids, a charitable organization dedicated to removing financial barriers for Saskatchewan children aged 4 to 19 to participate in arts and culture.
From its inception in 2007 to its growth and community impact, discover how Creative Kids has enriched lives and fostered cultural appreciation among the youth. Learn about their struggles, successes, and future aspirations.
You can learn more about Creative Kids at creativekidssask.ca.
YWAO Creative Kids_mixdown
Allan: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. I'm Al Grego, and this is the Yes We Open podcast.
Today I am in downtown Regina strolling through Victoria Park. It's a sunny, cool winter morning. Named after Queen Victoria in 1907. The park is the size of two city blocks. It's home to the Regina cenotaph, a memorial to local soldiers killed in World War I. The park is part of a larger city square, which throughout the year plays host to many activities including a children's play area, outdoor ice skating, various festivals, shopping, dining, and the Regina Farmer's market.
Downtown Regina is the cultural and commercial heart of [00:01:00] the city, hosting a lively culinary and retail scene. And dotted throughout the downtown you'll see various public art installations. It's also home to cultural landmarks such as the Globe Theater, home of Saskatchewan's first professional theater company and the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame.
These two venues may seem to be on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, arts and sports, but they have one very important thing in common. They figure heavily into the subject of today's story, creative Kids.
I am in the Cornwall Professional Building across 11th Avenue from the Cornwall Center Shopping Mall. I take the elevator up to the fourth floor. Coming off the elevator. I'm welcomed by two large floor to ceiling posters with the message "Culture builds community" on it with various pictures depicting arts and culture.
One has a Sask Lottery's logo and the [00:02:00] other says Sask Culture on it. I turn right out of the elevators and just beyond these posters is the entrance to creative kids.
Ana: Hi.
Allan: Hi, I'm Allen.
Ana: Nice to meet you. I'm Ana.
Allan: Ana. Nice to meet you.
Ana welcomes me into their office. She's the one I've been coordinating with. She gives me a quick tour. There are pieces of art and culture on all the walls, along with the display full of brochures of various programs. Ana leads me into their conference room, where I meet Gloria, and we settle in for our interview.
Gloria: Hi, my name is Gloria Walsh and I'm the manager of Creative Kids Saskatchewan.
Allan: Before we get to the history of creative kids, what is it that Creative Kids does?
Gloria: Creative Kids removes financial barriers to participation in arts and culture for children ages four to 19 in the province of Saskatchewan.
Allan: Okay, so it's a charitable organization.
Gloria: It is. We are a registered charity. We are federally registered as Creative Kids Canada, Inc.
Okay. But we currently only operate in Saskatchewan with all of the funds going to support children locally and also [00:03:00] supporting artists locally.
It started back in about 2007. A local chiropractor by the name of Dr. David Miller. He had been on the board of Sask Sport and with the rowing club. So he knew that there was a charitable organization for children who wanted to participate in the sports, but Dr. Miller also being a lover of arts, and he and his friends would often visit the symphony or the theater started to ask the question about.
What is there for children who want to be in the arts? Not every child wants to play hockey or soccer, and certainly he knew that many of the families that he had relationships with their children were taking perhaps piano lessons or violin lessons or attending dance classes, and he knew that those were also very expensive.
And so then it was [00:04:00] about in 2009, a group of community leaders. Approached Sask Culture with an idea to form an organization that would then help the vulnerable children in the province of Saskatchewan. And that's how it all began. They underwent a feasibility study to see if this was even something that would be accepted by the community and was an inherent need. And surely enough it was .
Allan: Right.
Gloria: So during the feasibility study, it was determined that there was no other program, like Creative Kids in all of Canada, and so Creative Kids. Became the first of its kind in Canada to offer funding support for those most vulnerable in the community, from low income families who are struggling to make ends meet, be able to participate in arts and culture.
Once it was determined that sure enough, we were going to go ahead with creating an organization then. There was a partnership with Sask Sport, who are the folks that look after kids' sport nationally and their charity called Give Kids a Chance [00:05:00] Charity agreed to shadow the charity functions of Creative Kids.
And so for the first years, Creative Kids actually operated under that charity umbrella. Sask Sport and Sask Culture, and Saskatchewan Parks and Recreation Association. Are three nonprofit organizations who have an agreement with the government of Saskatchewan to deliver funds to the sport culture and recreation community through Sask Lotteries.
So this is a very unique to our province in Saskatchewan. Where the funds from lottery ticket sales after things like the retailers have been paid and the winners have been paid. There's a few expenses and the government gets their license fee. But then those three. Nonprofit organizations are then tasked with delivering all of those funds to the sport, culture and recreation community in Saskatchewan.
Allan: Before you started in 2010, what were you doing? What's your [00:06:00] background?
Gloria: Before that? I was 17 years in the provincial government.
Allan: Okay.
Gloria: I have a background in accounting, human resources, and management. I have always been very interested in the arts. The arts has always had a profound impact on me personally.
Our family is very musical. Both my parents played, so there was often music and there was often singing and dancing. Throughout school, I was able to partake in the arts, theater, and choir, so it was just always part of me and part of who I was. When the opportunity came for me to join Sask Culture, I just jumped at the opportunity.
Allan: It sounds like it's a perfect marriage between your arts background and your financial background.
Gloria: It is, yes.
Allan: Must've been a no brainer.
Gloria: It all started in Regina, the provincial advisory committee. Were all folks from Regina. And so the seed money actually came from the Regina Mayor business and arts luncheon.
So they had a luncheon and they raised some funds and then our friends at Sask Arts had a Saskatchewan Pavilion at the 2010 [00:07:00] Olympics. And so money raised there also went towards starting up Creative Kids. So it was really a community. And partnership initiative at the beginning, and certainly Sask Culture was on board.
So that started out the seed money. And of course we looked for individual donations and corporate donors. And then we were able to grant out our first grant in 2010 to a young girl who wanted to dance.
Allan: Amazing.
Gloria: So how the program works is we work with current service providers, so current dance clubs, existing music teachers might be somebody in a smaller community who's teaching piano out of their home. It could be an arts club or an arts council delivering art classes or a theater. Offering workshops in theater.
So we look to those existing organizations and individuals who are already delivering those programs, and then we work directly with them. The families actually apply to Creative Kids. So we have three [00:08:00] deadlines a year, and the families can apply to Creative Kids for funding. They have to prove that they have the financial needs.
So they need to provide their Notice of Assessment from the Canada Revenue Agency as part of that application. And they have to determine where they want their child to attend classes, the type of class that they want to go to, and then those are all put into a pool, and those with the lowest income typically are the ones that we are able to fund.
Allan: How has it been going since you started?
Gloria: In that first year of operations? We funded about 600 children in youth from 21 different communities with about a hundred thousand dollars. By the next year, that had significantly increased with very little promotion, and by the second year it had doubled.
Allan: Wow.
Gloria: And now here we are about to celebrate our 15th anniversary, and we have now funded over 16,000 kids with over $7.1 million.
Allan: 16,000 in year 15.
Gloria: Yes.
Allan: All over the province, I see.
Gloria: All over the province. We are in 282 different communities, [00:09:00] province-wide.
Ana: Hi, my name is Ana Christina Camacho, and I'm the communications coordinator at Sask Culture. So I work with the Creative Kids team on the side of social media, website, and digital communications.
Allan: When did you start with Creative Kids?
Ana: I've been involved in a small way for about three years through my work at Sask Culture, but I only just became part of the Creative Kids team officially about a month ago.
Allan: Oh, wow. Congratulations!
Ana: When I moved into the Communications Coordinator position.
Allan: Other than, you know, being a fund position, why did you want to join Creative Kids?
Ana: For the three years that I've worked with Sask Culture and I've gotten to see the inside of Creative Kids a little bit, I've gotten the chance to write a couple of the stories for the Creative Kids Progress Report and things like that. Do a bit of the social media and when you're doing that, it's just so different from any other [00:10:00] communications work that I've ever done. Because. I haven't before had the chance to just really talk to someone and hear so immediately the impact that a program has had in their life. So I was talking directly to some of the children for these stories, and yeah, there's just nothing like interviewing a little 14-year-old. And they're, so happy and able to articulate how much of an impact that made in their life. And sometimes that immediate impact is not something you see.
Well, I think one of the more recent ones I did was for a young pianist. She was a little kid and she got a piano as a gift from a neighbor. Her family got this piano, so it was just very fortuitous and without that, they wouldn't have ever found out that she had this incredible talent. Now she's gone on to win a couple competitions and just moved on to even other instruments. And it's just become so much bigger than she ever thought it could be and the [00:11:00] only reason she had the ability to really see her potential in that area was because she got Creative Kid support.
Allan: Yeah.
Ana: And something her mom said in that interview really stuck with me to this day. She said that the most important thing for her was her kid being able to realize her potential, you know, without music, without having that opportunity in her life. And she never would've known how much her kid had to give to the world. So that was just amazing.
Allan: Yeah. And I'm sure there's hundreds, if not thousands of other stories.
Ana: Yeah. That's just one story out of, you know, however many people we uh, I have the numbers somewhere here, but it's, it's just all over the province. Yeah. People are having these stories.
Allan: Amazing. I love it.
Gloria: It was in 2016 Creative Kids became its own charity [00:12:00] and we did the work that was involved to become a charity and left Give Kids a Chance, and became our own charity in 2016 and took on all of our own charity work at that time. We've expanded the program, so initially we set out five pillars.
So art, theater, music. Dance and cultural activity, and when you talk about culture is a whole gamut of things.
Allan: Sure.
Gloria: And so the program has really expanded. There's still a lot of children that we fund for dance. That's probably our biggest applicant pool is children that want to dance. And then second would be children that want to take music lessons. But we've really expanded that to include culture. And the impact that culture has to our everyday lives and the need that is there.
The province of Saskatchewan is such a diverse population of people. There's a continuous influx of new people and we've been able to impact those [00:13:00] children as well. We often will fund indigenous traditional activities so that children can learn more about their indigenous culture and become proud of their cultural heritage.
And a prime example was when we had an influx of Ukrainian families due to the war in Ukraine. We were able to connect those children through our program to Ukrainian dance. And so to make it a little bit easier with everything that was happening at home and coming to a new country, they were able to connect with children that spoke their language.
Those families were able to connect with the Ukrainian families in the local community, and again, those language barriers were gone because they were able to communicate with those families and learn more about this new culture that they had been forced to come to.
Allan: That's amazing.
Ana: Creative Kids is a really unique charity, a really unique program in that a hundred percent of the donations that come into the charity go back into the community. We have no administrative overhead because Sask Culture takes care of that. It's a really [00:14:00] grassroots community oriented program.
Allan: Now, I know this isn't like why you do it, you're doing it for the kids and to give them an outlet creatively, but do you have any success stories in terms of maybe kids who went through your program or benefited from Creative Kids that have gone on to some sort of fame or renown?
Gloria: Now that we're 15 years in, we are finding that there are children coming back to us to share their stories with us and they're becoming our champions for the program.
There's several stories on our website. I'm sure that our communications folks would love to share hundreds of those with you, but we know of one girl for instance just recently, Brianna Dash in Swift Current, who loved to dance and was taking dance lessons, and she had an opportunity to learn more about ballet and she came to Creative kids to help her to take additional lessons and she has now gone on to receive the [00:15:00] highest ballet honor and is the first in Saskatchewan to receive that honor.
Allan: Amazing.
Gloria: And Creative Kids was a small part of her being able to do that.
Allan: And now she's giving back.
Gloria: And now she's giving back. Absolutely. Telling her story. Championing the program, enticing folks to to give if they can. Ultimately, we depend on donations from the community to be able to operate the program.
Allan: Up next, there's clearly a need for what Creative Kids brings to the arts and culture community of Saskatchewan. But running a charity in today's economic climate can't be easy. How are Gloria and her team coping? Let's find out.
You're listening to Yes, We Are [00:16:00] Open. In 2007, Dr. David Miller noticed that there was plenty of support for children of low-income families who wanted to get into sports in Saskatchewan, but no such support for the arts that led to the birth of Creative Kids. A charitable organization tasked with helping vulnerable children enjoy arts and culture.
In 2010, they gave their first grant, and since then they funded 16,000 kits to the tune of over $7 million. Not bad. Over 15 years, there have been challenges. So what's the biggest challenge for a charity? Let's find out.
In the past 15 years, if I were to ask you to look back on that time and think of what's been the biggest struggle, or maybe there's more than one, that the organization has faced, what would that be?
Gloria: Well, we've certainly learned lessons. So when Creative Kids was first developed, it was developed using the kids sport model.
Allan: Okay.
Gloria: Sport and culture are very different. Yes. And where kids sport, they have volunteer committees all across the province as well. And we [00:17:00] followed that model and we did all of that. What we've learned is that. That was a great model to get started, but we've really changed the program a lot since then.
Hockey is hockey, right? There's a sport governing body that governs hockey. That isn't the case with culture. Cultural is very vast and it can be very different that there's language lessons, there's different traditions that are specific to certain cultures. So we've had to adapt to that. And we only have seven committees across the province, whereas something that kids sport has, I'm sure a hundred.
Allan: Right.
Gloria: Certainly the biggest struggles out there are engaging the community and having them realize just exactly how important arts is to their everyday life. The understanding that. Arts and culture is just as important as sport and that there is a need and that the need continues to grow.
Ana: I think the biggest challenge [00:18:00] in our work is sharing our story, sharing the Creative Kids cause with people, because I think there are just so many people in the province that want to support this. That just don't, because they don't know about it. So just really getting the word out there and sharing the impact that it has because it's such a unique program where you can donate your money and it goes a hundred percent back into the community. And that's something that I think a lot of people would want to get behind. So it's just all about getting the word out there.
Gloria: We did very little promotion of the program for the first 10, 12 years, simply because we knew if we did, we would just be telling more people no.
Allan: Right.
Gloria: And every charity in Canada is applying and competing for the same pool of funds. That has certainly been an. An ongoing struggle is to continuously raise funds for creative kids, raise the awareness of the need for creative kids in the province, and to get the buy-in from folks. You can do [00:19:00] fundraising events, but they're very time consuming. And often we will raise a small amount of money. We call them friend-raisers.
'Cause really that's what an event is about. It's about connecting with the people that are there. So anytime that we can have community fundraising, third party fundraising, we just came off of a very successful Kinsmen TeleMiracle. Think of all the work that the Kinsmen do in the communities to raise, I think it was over $5 million. This year that has been our struggle is getting Creative Kids to a point where everybody recognizes it, everybody sees it as a need in the community, and everybody understands just exactly what the impact that arts and culture can have on a child.
Allan: In the last 10 years, there's been a lot of big impacts talking about like thinking. Back to the pandemic, for example. How were you guys affected during the pandemic?
Gloria: The need for Creative Kids continues to [00:20:00] grow. What we found during the pandemic sports stopped cultural activity, did not dance lessons and music lessons continued virtually Online.
Allan: Online?
Gloria: Yes.
Allan: Okay.
Gloria: The arts became a way for people to communicate. You had musicians from all over the world coming together to make music online. Children were making pictures and sending them to their grandparents as a way to connect. We found that the pandemic had a direct impact, of course, on donations, but it didn't have an impact on applications. Children actually maybe had to put down a hockey stick and pick up a guitar. And so a new passion evolved. And a prime example is in 2023, we funded 1,313 kids. This year or past year, 2024, we funded. Almost 2,500 kids.
Allan: Wow. So over double.
Gloria: So the need is there. And so of course we found that over economic times, there's less money to give and so there's less donations coming in. But more than ever, we're seeing [00:21:00] applications come to this program and just as soon as you start to do a little bit of promotion and the word gets out there, those applications just come in twofold, threefold.
Allan: So you have to kind of strike a fine balance about letting people know all the great work you're doing, but also not too many people 'cause then you may not be able to accommodate the applications.
Gloria: That's right.
Allan: Was there anything you did creatively during that time? Because if you were getting more applications but getting less money, what kind of problem solving was going on?
Gloria: We changed our fundraising initiatives. Okay. So we moved away from in-person events. Obviously you couldn't hold them. Yeah. And we did online fundraising initiatives. We really amped up our social media presence. We always had Facebook, or at least for a number of years, we had Facebook and now we have Instagram and LinkedIn, and tikTok and X. We really amped up our social media presence to get the word out there about Creative Kids, and we worked very closely with the service providers, with the artists and musicians and [00:22:00] teachers in the community to see what they could offer online.
Allan: Is there anything that Moneris did to help you in any kind of the fundraising aspect of Creative Kids?
Gloria: Absolutely. Moneris gave us the ability to accept donations online. And so where we were relying on funds through fundraising events and being handed a check or handed cash. We had that opportunity now through our website to link our website directly to Moneris and to accept those donations directly online so that the money continued to come in and we were able to continue to deliver back out.
Allan: Coming up after the break, we find out what the future holds for Creative Kids.
Welcome back to Yes. We Are Open. Since 2010, Creative Kids have been helping children of low income families discover a love for arts and culture in Saskatchewan. Raising funds is an [00:23:00] ongoing concern for every charity. So what does growth look like for Creative Kids?
What does the future hold? Let's find out.
Put your future goggles on and let me know. What do you think the future for Creative Kids Canada, how does it look?
Gloria: Well, I'm an optimist, so I think that the future of creative kids is positive as long as we can continue to gain that community support. Ultimately, it all depends on the donations. We continue to make connections with community leaders. We continue to apply for foundation grants. We actually, last year, received our first legacy donation, our first bequest.
Allan: Oh, nice.
Gloria: And that's another way that you can leave a legacy for children in this province.
And so as long as we continue to receive that support and garner even more support, Creative Kids will continue to fund kids.
Ana: I would like to see a lot more support. Just a lot more awareness in the community of Creative Kids, and that's part of my work in communications. I want to really continue the work that we do on social media [00:24:00] to really help garner that support. And just share how. People can be part of our future, if that makes sense. Because there's just so many ways to be involved in Creative Kids. You know, this was born out of a need in a community that someone noticed and brought up and you know, the volunteers gave their time to, to build to where it is today. So I think that if we can keep that support going. And share how people can keep continuing to be that part of that story, we can really reach where we want to go.
Allan: Do you have any personal goals yourself for the future of Created Kids?
Gloria: This year we funded over $950,000 to children. Our goal for 2025. Is the million dollar mark. We want to be able to raise enough funds this year, and we know we'll have the applications right, but we want to be able to say, this time next year that we funded a million dollars to children in [00:25:00] Saskatchewan.
Ana: I want to keep working to share these stories. Like Gloria culture has been a huge part of my life, arts and culture, and so I have this interest in communications that makes up a big part of my professional background. And so when I saw this, you know, it was. Like Gloria said, it just seemed to be the perfect fit for what I'm passionate about, both personally and professionally. So that's what I want to keep doing.
I feel very lucky that I get to know so much about the cultural community and to be part of it in such a interesting way, because I don't think, you know, maybe in one organization you would get to see one corner of the cultural community, but here you really get to see just the broadness of that impact. That's wonderful. It really makes me see Saskatchewan in a whole new way. It's such a wonderful cultural and diverse place.
Allan: For you personally, seeing how Creative Kids has grown since you joined in 2010. [00:26:00] How do you feel?
Gloria: Humbled.
Humbled by the support of the community to give back. And we hear all the stories and just to know that we've made the difference. My personal goal is that if I can change the life of one child, then it's been a success. I've made an impact then in the life of that child. And if I can keep one child on a positive path away from perhaps a life of drugs or the influences of gangs. I've done my job and I've left behind something that I can then be proud of.
Creative Kids is providing an opportunity for children to shine, to grow and to belong, and ultimately that's what we are here to accomplish.[00:27:00]
Allan: Is Creative Kids Canada Open?
All: Yes, we are open!
Allan: That's the story of Creative Kids.
I'm sure I've spoken of this before. There are many motivations to start a business. Passion, profit, challenge, change, independence, flexibility. But for some people, they just want to be of service to something bigger, whether it's other people or ideas. Usually this last one comes in the form of a charity or nonprofit like Creative Kids.
It's often difficult to measure ROI on the arts. Their benefits can at times seem intangible. But as a musician myself, I can assure you the benefits are real. [00:28:00] Thinking back to Gloria's story. When the world was shut down due to the pandemic and people were desperate for connection, they turned to the arts, playing music, telling stories, creating. The instinct is a primal one. The arts helped with resilience during the difficult time. That's what Creative Kids is doing now. Not only building a creative generation, but a resilient one.
I read somewhere online that when you invest in young people's potential, the impact ripples through families, communities, and even future generations. The work that Gloria and her team at Creative Kids are doing is just that... investment. And the returns they'll reap will be immeasurable for years to come.
Yes, We Are Open as a Moneris Podcast Production. I'd like to thank Ana and Gloria for taking the time to share their share story.
You can learn more about Creative Kids at creativekidssask.ca. Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and LinkedIn.[00:29:00]
For more information about this podcast, visit our site yesweareopenpodcast.com.
If you're a Canadian small business owner or know of one with an interesting story of perseverance to tell, I'd love to help tell it. You can contact me at Podcast@Moneris.com.
Tune in next week for another story of small business struggle and survival on the Yes We Are Open podcast.
I'm Al Grego. Thank you for listening.