YOU GOTTA HAVE ART. Angela Koch works with brothers (from left) Ben, Max, and Jack during a recent visit of the Eau Claire Regional Arts Council’s ARTmobile to Oakwood Mall.

The weather outside may be frightful, but it certainly won’t stop children from finding ways to get the creative juices flowing and learning about art. The Eau Claire Regional Arts Council hopes to do just that by encouraging children and their parents to participate in free arts and crafts sessions this holiday season and beyond. On Saturday mornings throughout the winter, the ARTmobile will be bringing fun projects to Oakwood Mall and the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library.

Rose Dolan-Neill, ECRAC’s visual art director and coordinator for the ARTmobile, says the program is about much more than crafts. “It’s not just arts and crafts, but there’s a lesson with these projects, too,” she said. “Not a sit-down lesson … but the lesson is organic, and it just comes through naturally when you’re creating these projects.”

UWEC senior Sara Babino, one of the interns working on the ARTmobile this year, said she enjoys working and planning for the projects. The crafts they do are engaging for children because they aren’t the typical “everyone’s looks the same” projects, Babino said. This way, children are able to come up with something that is unique to their skills, sometimes with the help of their parents.

At the library, Dolan-Neill said they reach about 20-30 children and families on a given Saturday, while at the mall it’s closer to 70, but she expects this number increases around the holidays. In addition, she said they have a good partnership with UW-Eau Claire, allowing two spots for art education majors to intern on the project, which she says is a learning experience for them as well. “This is what they want to do with their life,” she said. “This gives them valuable, real-life, hands-on experience.”

“It’s nice to teach them that art has value beyond something pretty you put on your mom’s porch,” she said. “It can be important to you in a way that you express yourself.”

There is no age limit for children who can participate, Babino said, but they typically recommend ages three and up because it can be harder for younger children to use some of the materials. At the library, projects correspond with books the library picks out ahead of time. After story time, children base their crafts off elements from the stories they just read.

Dolan-Neill said ARTmobile was created because of the dearth of visual arts education for children, especially in the summer months when they are off school. “With lack of funding in general for the visual arts, this is just a way for the arts center, ECRAC, to boost education in the Valley,” she said.

Since ARTmobile start a few years ago, Dolan-Neill said ECRAC has seen only improvements in the amount of success and impact the program has made on the community. “In the summer months we definitely saw a lot of families would come to the farmer’s market on Wednesday mornings, for example, just so they could do the ARTmobile,” she said. “We’ve got a nice strong following of families that really appreciate what we do and see value in visual arts.”

The ARTmobile is made possible by grants from the Eau Claire Community Foundation and Visit Eau Claire. You’ll find the ARTmobile at Oakwood Mall at 10am on Dec. 27, Jan. 3, Jan. 31, Feb. 14, and Feb. 28, and at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library at 10am Jan. 10, Feb. 7, and March 7. For a full schedule, visit www.eauclairearts.com/artmobile.phtml