Questions & Answers
Everything you need to know about contributing to and supporting CDIC.
Quick-Links
We have donation forms on CanadaHelps, PayPal Giving Fund, Charitable Impact and Donate A Car Canada. The CanadaHelps platform will also let you set up a fundraiser on our behalf. For an e-Transfer in Canada, use info@cdic-cide.org.
Our expenses go three program areas: Collection Development, Conservation, and Access and Education. The latter is where most resources go with volunteer program, domain and website costs, booth materials, event registrations, and live presentations during various events. The conservation program expenses relate to digitization, storage, and information management system. Collection Development includes printing, and postage or courier.
We currently accept art on paper, cardboard, or fabric. That is crayon, pen or pencil drawings or writings, as well as paintings, prints, stencils, and collages. We hope to add three-dimensional objects in the future, but cannot accommodate them yet. We collect original objects in the permanent collection. This allows us to manage the complete digitization and conservation process.
If they do not wish to contribute their originals, website subscribers can upload digital images directly on the website. We do not impose aesthetic criteria, or make artistic judgement on the content of the images. Their authenticity and the exactitude of their provenance are what interest us. We accept toddlers’ scribbles, unfinished drawings, rough sketches, as well as elaborate multimedia works or homemade comic books, or school assignments.
No. Images on legal or letter size paper or smaller are easily processed. It is preferable that contributions fit a 9 x 12 in (23 x 30 cm) envelop for transport. Oversize artwork can also be accommodated, but we suggest that you contact us prior to making the contribution.
Anyone really, as long as the person who made the artwork was under 18 years of age at the time of creation. If the creator is still under 18, the contribution must be authorized and confirmed by a parent or guardian. A person can contribute their own artworks, that of their child, relative, student or patient, with consent to do so.
First, you must decide which ones you are ready to give away. We collect and preserve the original physical object. Then use our online or paper Contribution Form to confirm your contribution with us. The form includes the Contribution Agreement and is kept with the images for their authentication. The form can be sent electronically, and we send you a confirmation email. You then either mail the works to us, or we arrange for pick up by a courier provider. You will receive a confirmation letter with a high resolution version of the works, digitized by us.
Yes, absolutely. Although we prefer to make images publicly available, you can ask us to not publish your contribution, or postpone publishing to a future date, or restrict access to researchers or scientific journals. This can be specified on your Contribution Form.
By default, the items we receive are digitized in high resolution, and published in the searchable permanent collection, using Access to Memory information management system. This system connects the collection with other specialized archives worldwide. We also feature collection items on a dynamic image gallery and the blog on our website, as well as in the quarterly newsletter, and at exhibitions or social events.
It depends. You can contribute them for preservation. However we cannot reproduce them or make them available for others to appreciate. That is unless you can show an explicit permission from the authors, a parent or guardian that authorizes reproduction and publication. Consent is the key that will help us dedicate resources to accessibility and education.
Family consent is required for kids’ contributions. We suggest that you provide copies of our Contribution Form to the participants. We can also establish a partnership and bring our resources together for collection development. We can establish a partnership if your organization wishes to assist with our collection development efforts on a temporary or ongoing basis.
We are the only and first organization in Canada to specifically care about what children create and how their expression is cared for and curated by their families and society. Each image records a child’s experience and social contribution. The collection acts as a repository of children’s collective experience and voice over time. We encourage academics in the humanities to consider the collection as a primary source for their continued learning about child development, childhood, education, culture, and the arts.
When came the time to give our organization a name, we knew that we would not limit our acquisitions to drawings only, but rather accept a wide range of formats and means of children expression. We did not want our name to mislead people with a restrictive designation. Even the term “children’s art” would not have conveyed our mission in the best possible way. Ultimately “children’s expression” could have worked.
In a way, we can say that it is by design that we have opted for “design”. For us, the term reflects the agency or the will of the child in action, being creative. We hope to bring front and centre the child’s inner capability, be it with conscious or unconscious contents making its way in the resulting object.
We also hope to stand out from other past and current efforts to collect, curate, and make available children’s art. It is our way to step back reflectively about Art with a capital A, and any artistic or aesthetic assumption motivated by tradition.
Children’s expression covers a much broader array of concerns than those of art practices and art education, past and current. Finally and admittedly, there is also a fun aspect to our denomination. While the notion of design refers to refinement and strategic intelligence or creativity, children’s art has early on been qualified as primitive, awkward, or just cute. Children’s design in a way elevates the discourse, and maybe gives this reality a long overdue rethinking.
