Summer Art Club Project, Palestine

We need volunteers for art and performing arts workshops aimed at reducing conflict among children from different backgrounds.

Volunteer art & performing arts project, Cambodia

Use your painting, fine arts or performing arts skills to work with primary school children in rural Cambodia, South East Asia.

Volunteer art projects in Nepal

Our art projects in the foothills of the Himalayas are making a real difference to communities still struggling to recover from recent natural disasters.

Volunteer art teaching slum children in India

Use your artistic skills to teach arts and crafts to disadvantaged children in schools in Jaipur, a wonderful hub for artists.

Gap year art teaching – HIV children in India

Use your arts skills to create murals and sculptures and teach art and English to HIV-positive children in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Art, drama and therapy volunteers – special needs children in India

Create murals or use your dance, drama and/or music skills in this special needs school – volunteers with therapy skills also welcome.

Paint the Palestinian Wall – Kadoorie University

With this project, you would be working alongside Palestinian students and artists to paint the separation wall itself.

Volunteer art project – Galle, Sri Lanka

Use your arts, and crafts skills to teach disadvantaged and special needs children in Sri Lanka, creating murals and organising extra-curricular activities.

Volunteer to teach art and drama to children in Uttar Pradesh, India

Live with the Royal Family at Fort Awagarh while using your arts skills to teach disadvantaged children in a local school

Teach art and drama in a Palestine girls’ school

Use your drama and art skills to make a difference to this thriving girls’ school on Palestine’s West Bank.

Volunteer art project, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Use your design and/or textile skills to help disabled local women in an independent centre in the capital of Cambodia.

Teaching art to deaf children, Karauli Palace, India

Live with the Royal Family at the Karauli Palace while using your arts skills to teach deaf children and create murals.

Using the medium of art, GapArt gives therapy and pleasure to vulnerable, third world communities in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, India, Palestine and Nepal. In many cases it combines this with teaching individuals a vocational skill. It also creates a forum for cross cultural exchange and an educational experience for volunteer artists. We achieve this by sending volunteers  overseas to support our projects.

James Chapman, the founder of GapArt, is an anthropologist and qualified teacher. He started his own gap year company in 1998 and has been responsible for over 3,000 successful volunteer placements. The cross cultural benefits of art are widely recognised and on the strength of this, GapArt was created.

Why we specialise in art projects

There are numerous volunteer projects dotted across the world which have benefitted from the support of individual volunteers. These include schools, orphanages, rehabilitation centres for disabled people and safe houses for people who have fallen upon hard times.

Projects of this nature will always need volunteers but increasingly they need people with specific skills. These might include physiotherapy, occupational therapy, teaching English and the arts.

Volunteers with GapArt address this need. The projects we support are not front line, desperate initiatives and are unlikely to create headlines of their own. They are however humanitarian causes playing a vital role in supporting vulnerable people. These projects are well organised and provide adequate shelter, food, clothing and often an education for the residents. Life, however, remains difficult. The standard of living is rudimentary. There are none of the creature comforts that we take for granted. Imagine living in a shelter with bare concrete walls, concrete floors and the drudgery of surviving to keep you going until tomorrow.

How your art skills can help deliver change

As a volunteer with GapArt you can help change this. The joy and often therapy that art can bring to people’s lives has been widely recognised. It can heal wounds, open imaginations and break down cultural barriers. That’s why we need your art skills to support these projects.

You could:

• Create a massive wall mural at a centre for disabled children in Sri Lanka
• Teach textile skills to landmine victims in Cambodia
• Create a sculpture with HIV children in India
• Paint a school devastated by the earthquake in Nepal
• Paint a section of the Israeli – Palestinian wall to raise awareness of the brutal divide

You don’t need qualifications, just a good basic level of art skills. Whether you’ve just left school or university, or are looking for a career or summer holiday break, we would love to hear from you. Take a look at how we started, read about countries we work with such as India, Nepal, Palestine, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, and then complete the application form or contact us.