How do you organize output/transitions in your art room?
We have a 6 yo and a 3 yo. I understand the basics of how to organize art SUPPLIES for kids, and there’s a ton of inspiration out there for it.
But what do you do about output? Including:
- Art created that you want to keep
- Half-made art that you probably don’t want to keep but a kid would never suggest getting rid of
- Partially finished projects that may or may not return
- Broken markers, etc
And I want to be clear, this isn’t PRIMARILY just the eternal “what do you do with all the art” question.
Ie, we have a wall for hanging things, though don’t rotate it very often, but we also have boxes for saved art.
It’s more like, what is your overall system & physical setup for handling all art room objects that are not pristine supplies?
- How do you decide keep vs save vs partially finished?
- Do 90% used sticker sheets stay around until the last stickers are gone?
- What workflow is sustainable to keep it organized?
- Is physical space dedicated to these liminal phases of art, rather than just supplies and worktop and storage?
- What do you do with 3d art?
- Between art being made by a child with minimal supervision, and an adult being available to hang it or put it in an archive, what happens?
Thank you!! :)
2 answers
rachel8302
We have a “keep forever” box. If the kids make any art at home or at school that they might want to keep forever, they put it in the box. Or if there is something I want to keep forever, I put it in the box.
About once per year, usually during the summer, we sort through the box. I ask the kids at that point if they still want to keep it forever. Anything they say no to is discarded. Anything they are still a maybe on is put back in the box. And anything they feel passionately about keeping forever we put in an Artkive box.
I find that with time and distance they reevaluate what they want to keep forever.
I then ship the Artkive box (once full) to Artkive, and they take beautiful photographs of every piece. When we have enough art for a book, I have it printed into book form and shipped to me. And we have done some books for grandparents as well as gifts. We are slowly filling up a small library of books of their most favorite pieces.
I believe that Artkive also has an app where you can take the pictures yourself, but I like the quality of the photos when I ship pieces in.
- jon—never heard of Artkive before but this whole approach sounds great.
mamabird50
I’ve been thinking about this for so long! My oldest is 11, and is very artistic. We’ve tried so many things!
In his room we hung wire picture hangers with hooks so he has a place to display his art work. It has limits, so he picks and chooses his favorites to keep, and which ones to toss. That works well for him. I keep very few things in the “forever” box, because there’s just SO much.
So, we display what he likes until he’s done and take a picture and then toss it.
For my girls, it’s a lot crazier. There’s twins who are 7 and a 5 year old. The amount of art work is 🤯
There’s just NO way to save it all. So, for them I have these picture frames hanging up, where the front lifts up and we can put new pictures/artwork in whenever they want. They’re paper sized frames, and that works really well. Every now and then, I go through and pull out my favorites, mark with names/ages, and put them in a folder for when they’re older.
I’ll be honest though, most of it ends up trashed.
If it’s not finished, it’s trashed. They never want to finish, they always have other ideas they want to finish.
Take pics of what you think is cute (my favorites are the pics of my kids holding their artwork, you can see the pride and happiness in their faces).
As for supplies. We use pencil boxes. If it’s broken, used up, or doesn’t work, it’s trashed, otherwise it goes in the pencil box for the next art project. I don’t worry about tossing sticker sheets with a few stickers left on them.
I felt bad trashing things for a while, until I realized how much of my own artwork I want from when I was a kid. Just a couple, out of the hundreds of thousands. AND with digital photos being so great, I don’t feel like we have to physically keep everything.