Meg Bourne: Art feeds hope

Meg Bourne has a knack of turning tragedy and hardship into healing and hope. Just look at the trajectory of her nonprofit, Art Feeds, which helps children use creativity to express and process their emotions: Bourne started the organization in 2009 when she was just 19 years old. It was still a young, struggling nonprofit when a deadly, EF5-rated tornado ripped through her hometown of Joplin, Mo., on May 22, 2011. On that day, Bourne was 30 minutes away, driving back from her grandmother's house, as the weather turned increasingly dangerous, and the tornado warnings grew more dire. She called her sister, who still lived at home with her parents, to tell her to go down to the basement.

"She said, 'I'm not at Mom and Dad's,' and then the line went dead," recalls Bourne. "So it was just total terror, speeding back to town."

In fact, Bourne's sister had gone to the house of two friends who were new to the area to warn them about the impending tornado. She hustled them both to safety in the bathroom even as the rest of the house was torn apart by the storm.

When Bourne reached Joplin, the city was unrecognizable.

"It's probably the closest I'll ever get to seeing a war zone," she says slowly. "I can't really properly think of a way to describe it. After I found my sister, I went to my house that I shared with [Art Feeds COO Brooke LeMasters], and it was completely destroyed. Our neighbor had two small children that we were close with. She couldn't find them. So we spent time trying to find her children. None of the phone lines worked. I didn't know it at the time, but people had come to our house, seen it totally destroyed, and had been digging for us -- they didn't know if we were there, if we were alive. It was absolute madness."

At its widest, the tornado stretched most of a full mile across the city, producing nearly 200 MPH winds and flattening subdivisions and business zones alike. As a result, 158 people were killed and around 1,200 were injured. Everywhere Bourne looked, there was damage and destruction. Her terror and grief seem very fresh, nearly a decade later.

"I will never forget my neighbor looking for her children," she says, adding that the children were finally located later that day. "And I will never forget a woman who was carrying a picture of her grandson and saying, 'Have you seen him? Have you seen him?' I thought, 'Why don't I know who this is? How do I not know my neighbor, six houses down? Why don't I know this child?' All of these little instances were the fuel for us. We certainly had our own traumas to deal with, which came later. But at the time, we were just asking, 'What do we do? We have to do something, anything, to help these kids.'"

That determination only grew stronger as the scope of the destruction became more evident. In addition to the human cost, the tornado had erased large swaths of the city's identity.

"When my house was a pile of sticks, I could still recognize it as my pile of sticks," she says. "I could point to the blue wall. But when they cleaned up all of the debris, it was very disorienting -- 'Where did I live', you know? Because there were no longer any house numbers. It kind of made our community a blank slate, which was a different kind of trauma and grief. And we thought, 'So, how are we feeling? And if that's how we're feeling, how must the kids feel?'"

Though Art Feeds was still in its infancy in 2011, Bourne and LeMasters had worked hard to forge relationships with educators so that the duo could bring their creativity and art therapy into the public school system. They were able to tap these relationships in order to expand their services to address the trauma experienced by their town.

"We thought, 'OK. What we've been doing with these small groups and marginalized kids, this is for everyone now," says Bourne. "Prior to the tornado, we were working with about 200 kids monthly, and then, that summer, we were working with 2,000 children in summer school each week. So we grew really quickly and learned a lot really quickly."

Starting young

Bourne's desire to make the world a better place started young. Her mother, Amy, received a phone call from a teacher when Bourne was in elementary school, expressing concern that she wasn't eating the lunch her mother made for her every day. Instead, she was opening it up, putting a piece of paper inside, and then dropping the uneaten food into the trash. So her mother asked her about it when she came home from school that day.

"In class, they had talked about homeless people, and how, sometimes, they will go through the trash to look for food," says Amy. "So [Meg] was putting a note in her lunch and placing it in the trash, hoping a homeless person would find it. I said, 'I love your heart, but I need you to eat lunch. Let's think of something else we can do that will make you feel better, so that you can help people.'"

Growing up, Bourne experienced a shyness that her mother says bordered on social anxiety, and she loathed any activity that made her the focus of attention. Her refuge was her art table, where, early on, she exhibited a creative talent that her parents were quick to support.

"We have three very different daughters who all needed something different in their lives," says Amy. "Meg just happened to be shy. She liked to be with her family and sit and read or do art at my kitchen table. My kitchen table had all of the mars, all this paint, even scratches where she had tried to engrave something on metal. Her little art table was the same way, full of imperfections that other people may get upset about, but I still treasure. I love it."

The family was close knit, a lucky thing given some of the hurdles they faced during Bourne's childhood. She had health issues that required several surgeries, and her father, who was diagnosed with kidney failure when Bourne was in third grade, has struggled with his health her entire life.

"My dad is incredible," she says. "Through all of [his health issues], he always showed up, always. My mom learned to do home hemodialysis so that he could be comfortable and be at home with our family. I have grown up around incredible problem solvers that never complained, that always made the best out of everything."

After high school, Bourne was determined to go to school to study fashion design; her ultimate goal was to use her business to raise money for uniforms so that young women in Africa could attend school. She studied at the University of Kansas for her first year, planning on transferring to the fashion program at Washington University in St. Louis, but she wasn't accepted. Devastated, she sought out an internship with Tom's Shoes in Los Angeles, where she worked in the nonprofit department. The company donated a pair of shoes to someone in need every time a pair was sold.

"Tom's was only three or four years old, and working there really gave me the perspective on something they don't tell you in college, which is: 'No one has fully figured everything out yet'," she says. "Everyone is learning and getting curious and figuring out how to do business better. That was such a gift, because I think that gave me the permission and authority to start Art Feeds, because I had been inside an organization doing great things that looked very polished from the outside, but on the inside, we were literally just figuring things out all the time."

"It was a huge experience for her," remembers Amy. "She learned so much. I think she bloomed into the person she is today. The organization was young and growing so fast that they gave her things that, as a business owner myself, I would probably give someone after they had worked for me for two or so years. But here she was, 18 years old, and she was doing it, handling all the pressure."

After the internship, Bourne returned to Joplin fired up and ready to make a difference in her community. She even got involved with several organizations that served needs internationally.

"Two times in our friendship, I've invited her to do something last minute like dinner or a movie, and she couldn't because she was in a foreign country building a school," notes close friend Meredith McClary. "She has literally been in Africa on a boat with foundations that buy little girls out of the sex trade from their owners and has some incredible stories to tell about buying a child's life back."

Bourne also signed up to volunteer in the local school system and was placed in a classroom with students with special needs, where she discovered she was remarkably good at connecting with kids.

"With each Art Feeds lesson, Meg is helping children learn about the importance of self-worth, how to make sense of big feelings, creativity and so much more," says boyfriend Vincent McCracken.

There was one young boy who found a particular place in Bourne's heart. Once she gained his trust, he confessed he wasn't being fed at home.

"So we got his nutritional needs taken care of, but I thought the problem went so much deeper than just being fed," she says. "Art and creativity were, are, my safe space. I saw that when I was a child. So I decided to try that with him, and he was the initial 'Aha!' moment that showed me that expression is incredibly important, especially for children. It can build up their self-confidence, self-worth, self-efficacy and help with mental and emotional wellness."

The young man displayed an innate skill with watercolors. He couldn't write his ABCs, but when Bourne showed him how to paint them, he was successful.

"I still think about that, all the time, that his brilliance was being measured in the wrong way," says Bourne.

Just like that, Art Feeds was born. The name was a given because, as Bourne says, "art was feeding that first little boy in a way that was just as essential as food."

About six months after Bourne started the organization, LeMasters came on board as chief operating officer. Since the work requires art supplies in order to serve as many students as possible, they both volunteered for Art Feeds for the first three years without receiving a paycheck. As executive director, part of Bourne's responsibility was to seek funding for the organization -- which meant pushing the boundaries of what she was comfortable with by presenting to large groups and meeting new people.

"She's had to put herself out there, stand in front of organizations, tell them what she was doing, ask them for money, write grants, all while she's still painfully shy," says Amy. "I think she would still kind of be a wallflower if she didn't love children and love what she was doing. It made her push. I know the anxiety is still there; I don't know if you ever lose all of that. But that's what she tries to teach the kids: 'There are no wrong answers. Don't be afraid. We do hard things.' All of these things come from an inner part of herself."

"She once tweeted Mark Cuban and ended up getting a check from him for $50,000 for Art Feeds," says McClary.

The organization's website lists five key areas in which art interventions have made a difference: problem-solving skills and self-efficacy in children; healing through art for children who face challenges; expression for children's emotional health and well being; decreasing fear, stress and anxiety in children; and prioritizing creativity as a valuable life skill. The site's scoreboard claims 92,000 children have been reached since 2009, but while on a phone interview, Bourne realizes, with a disbelieving but delighted laugh, that number will soon turn over to 100,000 based on the work they've done since the beginning of the pandemic. Art Feeds has touched 100 communities, including some outside the United States. Its mobile art center -- a bus called "Van Gogh 2.0" -- and 42 public art mural projects, designed and implemented by students, help to spread its brand of creative expression throughout the communities they serve.

Growing fast

With the organization's sudden expansion following the Joplin tornado, Art Feeds started focusing more directly on finding creative ways to treat trauma in children. Take the activity they did in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, for example.

"We had a volunteer pretend to be the mayor, to come in the classroom and task the kids with rebuilding the town -- dreaming up whatever they imagined could be in it," Bourne says. "They either imagined rebuilding as is or with brand new ideas they had, and it was so powerful. We had a student build a huge apartment complex for anyone who had lost their homes so they had a place to live. There were new schools, new and improved, with water slides and chocolate fountains and a trampoline. The second part of the project was to find big refrigerator boxes and let the students physically create their dream for rebuilding the town. We set that up on the lawn of their playground, and they got to experience each classes' buildings as one big town."

Bourne says she and LeMasters learned so much while helping the students process their grief and trauma.

"People like to say, 'Oh, they're kids, they'll be fine,'" she says. "They deserve the space to sort through their feelings and emotions, too. And they will be better for it if we can teach them how to express themselves in a healthy way now and how to express their feelings appropriately now, so that it will not come up sideways for them later. Adverse childhood experiences manifest themselves into lots of symptoms -- real, measurable, physical symptoms -- in adulthood. So for us, it's about meeting the kids where they're at, right now."

As the organization grew, people took notice. Bourne and her organization were recognized in 2012 by VH1's Do Something Awards, as well as by NBC's American Giving Awards that same year. The organization's work has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Forbes, Teen Vogue and Fast Company. "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" featured Bourne and Art Feeds in the aftermath of the tornado.

"She probably doesn't want me to tell you this, but I think it's a perfect example of who Meg is to her core," says McClary. "When she lost her house and all her belongings in the Joplin tornado, the 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' producer heard about her and wanted to build her a house. She told them there were other people who were more deserving and helped them find another family that had kids [to serve]."

When the covid-19 pandemic shut schools down in mid-March of the 2019-20 school year, it could have sounded the death knell for Art Feeds -- without schools to visit, what was there for them to do? But instead of letting go of their mission, Bourne and LeMasters intensified it.

"Art Feeds has grown a lot just in the time that I've known them," says close friend Channing Barker. "And now they've transformed into an organization that helps teachers teach students during a pandemic -- how to reach them, how to be in 15,000 places at one time, how to still be Art Feeds to so many kids."

"Meg's greatest skill is her relentless determination and refusal to accept defeat," says McCracken. "There is no problem or challenge she isn't willing to face head-on. Whether it's big, scary tasks like fundraising and grant writing to keep Art Feeds alive during a pandemic or more typical struggles like figuring out how to assemble and deliver thousands of art packs with nothing but her Prius, Meg thrives in her ability to problem solve and rise to the occasion. If you ever find Meg in a fight with a bear, you better pray for the bear -- because she's not losing or giving up."

"When everything shut down due to covid-19 in March," says LeMasters, "she was coming up with a new stream of income with Project Boxes, grant writing like crazy, organizing and delivering emergency art kits to schools to be distributed with meals for high-need families, then coming back to the office and filming project videos to share for free for families online -- along with dealing with all the anxiety and transitions we were all experiencing on a personal level. There's vision and strategy to ask 'How will Art Feeds survive this?' And then there's heart to say 'What are the biggest needs around us, and what do we have to share?' And she holds both of those in the same hand, along with the hustle to push it forward, even when things feel uncertain."

The organization's extensive research and comprehensive trauma curriculum was tailormade for this moment, and Bourne and LeMasters immediately worked to get those materials out to schools that were desperate for ways to support their students. Since March, they've distributed 1,100 emergency art kits to students and have created over 45 free weekly projects they offer on their website. The summer was dedicated to training their community assists and organizational partners on trauma-informed care. Their closest partner is the Springdale school district, where they've trained all the art teachers and have provided art packs to all students who receive free or reduced lunches. They create one activity a week aimed at supporting social/emotional skills, and their full trauma curriculum is now included free with an Art Feeds membership. (Memberships cost $29.99 per month and are one of the organizations main ways of supporting their arts outreach.)

"And then we're also producing new curriculum every month this year," says Bourne. "That way, we can be reactive to what's happening -- of course, with the pandemic, and also with racial injustice and the political climate. That still affects children, just the energy of it, whether or not they know what's going on."

It's an exhausting list of accomplishments, but Bourne does not sound exhausted. She sounds energized.

"We love what we do, and I'm just really grateful that we get to do a job that has an impact on the little ones that we care about so much," she says. "And also that we still love and enjoy our job like we do. I'm surprised [at our success], but more than surprise is gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.

"Anything is possible. And I think this goes back to my parents and how I was raised, and also working with Tom's and seeing the message of 'Just keep moving.' Move through life with curiosity: 'What's going to happen next? What can we do next? What can we learn here?' And then we just keep moving forward."