Talkin' With a Partner: Pat MacGregger of Painting With Pat

Shilpi: Tell me about the organization.
Pat: Painting With Pat is a one of a kind non-profit art education organization with a ‘Wildlife Twist!’ Our art programs are unique because we interlace wildlife and environmental conservation with the arts. While the arts and kids are our heart, our aim is one of education, offering thousands of children and adults fun, dynamic, interactive art, science/wildlife based activities with community and out-reach programs, summer art camps, and visual art exhibits, which allow them to explore, dream, and discover themselves strengthening their connection with wildlife and the environment in their everyday lives. Through the arts we teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships with wildlife and the environment. For all, it is a unique experience where the classroom extends beyond the walls with nature the source of inspiration breaking the traditional art education molds.

Shilpi: What do you look for when getting volunteers?
Pat: Painting With Pat admires a person that is devoted to improving the health and well-being of people, animals and the planet and exhibits these traits through every day actions. A volunteer should be passionate about making a positive impact in the lives of families and understands the need to connect children with wildlife and nature to influence the health of our future. Volunteers should be fervent about nature, the arts, wildlife and love sharing their enthusiasm with the students.

Shilpi: What type of support would a volunteer receive in terms of references, recommendations, incentives?
Pat: Volunteering with Painting With Pat can open the door to a world of experiences! Through our network of partners throughout the U.S. and Australia (including wildlife animal parks, zoos, state environmental and outdoor education organizations), you can meet people with similar interests, learn new skills, make new contacts, build your resume and have the satisfaction that you are doing your part to connect young people to nature through the arts to improve the health and well-being of people, animals, and the planet.

Shilpi: What does leadership, innovation, and philanthropy look like for the upcoming generations?
Pat: I’m excited! We are living in a changing society, an economy that is shifting from a manufacturing-driven engine to a services-driven enterprise. If young Americans are to succeed and to contribute to what former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, described as our ‘economy of ideas,’ they will need an education that develops imaginative, flexible, and tough-minded thinking. The arts powerfully nurture the ability to think in this manner.

Shilpi: Mother Teresa once said, “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” What did you seek to conceive when you first started Painting with Pat?
Pat: The idea and motivation behind PWP was pretty simple: to share with the world the joy, excitement, mystery, grace and the interconnectedness of our planet through the universal language of art! Nature has been for me, as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, delight, my teacher, and my home. The idea and motivation that launched Painting With Pat is still simple and just as strong with the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of our work as it unfolds. PWP fills a need – one that is global and in our own backyard – a need to reconnect our children to nature.

Shilpi: When did you realize you really had something phenomenal with the Painting with Pat?
Pat: When the class was over and nobody wanted to leave! When we had multiples of parents asking when and where the next PWP workshop will be, when the zoo animal handlers said, “Thank you for doing this,” after the workshop; when we were contacted all the way from the Australia Zoo asking how do we do what we do.; when a little girl said,”This is the first time I’ve ever petted a duck.”

Shilpi: What do you think Painting with Pat will look like in 5 years?
Pat: A family-friendly household name, a resource that parents count on for exciting, interactive, hands on art projects that promotes environmental and wildlife conservation!

Shilpi: Lastly, what makes the Painting with Pat so totally and completely “cool?”
Pat: PWP art programs are unique because we interlace wildlife and environmental conservation with the arts, breaking traditional art education molds by taking the kids beyond the classroom into nature to create art or we bring a live animal into the classroom as an art model! They learn about the species’ characteristics, how it has adapted to its habitat, if it is on the endangered species list, and what small steps can they take to help preserve the animal and habitat.