It’s Give and Take with Art Supply Boxes in Fort Hunt

Creative Girl Scout project will share art supplies.

A few years ago, creating a community book box mounted on the side of the community street acted as an exchange venue for other readers to grab a book or donate a book without any strings attached. 

A few Girl Scouts in Fort Hunt have taken that idea a step further with art supplies and are now seeing their project through for a Girl Scout Silver Award, which is similar to the Boy Scout Eagle Badge.

The scouts involved are West Potomac students Katie Damsky, age 14, Bea Slaton, 14, and eighth grader Scarlett O’Brien. They joined forces with Owen Hammett at the Hollin Hall senior center to build the boxes and put it all into action over the Labor Day weekend. When completed, the art box will be placed in a neutral spot on Riverside Road. They plan to restock it with donated art supplies in the weeks following.

The Fort Hunt art supply box these scouts are making is a form of the nationally-known boxes called "Free Little Art Galleries," started by Stacy Milrany from Seattle. She created the first box in 2020 but it was for actual art, not art supplies. Locally, there are quite a few of these galleries sprinkled around the area in Alexandria, Arlington and Reston among others where people leave artworks such as little paintings, drawings and sculptures. There are two dolls in the mini gallery named “Clare” and “Don” overseeing the operation, but they hope no one takes the dolls. A lot of this is based on trust.

The book exchange that started this give and take movement is called "Little Free Library," which began in 2009 as a non-profit organization that promotes neighborhood book exchanges. There are over 150,000 registered little libraries. The wooden container is designed to look like a one-room schoolhouse and the idea is to take a book to read and leave a book for others to read. 

Now in Fort Hunt, the idea is to take an art supply and leave an art supply so others can create art for their house, their classroom or to donate.

The scouts are artists too, painting the art box a bright color to liven things up.