Our Story begins with 4 People. These people are living with Mental Illness and have trouble with a normal job. They also all like Art, so they began working on Art together as a group. They are all self-taught and have various skill levels, so they started to notice a few patterns.

1. Once people feel comfortable asking questions, the more experienced artists would naturally explain how to fix a problem.

2. The Art became much more beneficial to our Mental Health when done in a group, and given positive feedback from the group.

As Members of Crossroads Cape Breton (A Mental Health Clubhouse model) we have seen how effective a large group of people working towards a single goal can be, so we set out to see if we could make something similar but centered around working on Art as a collective.

This presented with one major problem. We have a budget of $0 and no way to cover the startup costs out of our personal finances.

We knew we needed to come up with an idea for how to make this project self-sustainable, so we took to trying to fundraise our way into making the idea a reality. After many failed experiments, we found the most effective fundraisers were those where we donated our personal Art to create some kind of product like a Postcard or a Christmas Card.

As we were finishing up getting enough funds and partnerships with other local organizations to actually Launch, we were hit with Covid-19 Lockdowns. This actually worked out in our favor, in that we had no significant monthly expenses yet.

During this time we began doing experiments on how to create an Online Community within our budget. We also took this free time to work on our own personal Art skills.

After a few failed attempts and dead-ends, we have finally found a solution.

Google Workspace for Non-Profits has a cost of $0/month, so it actually fits within our budget. It gives us the control and security to create a virtual environment for our members to interact with each other safely, and it gives is the collaboration tools to allow our members and staff to share files and work with each other on larger projects.