The Children's Art House Trust is closing its doors.
The Children's Art House Trust is closing the door on its beloved after-school and school holiday programmes.
Since December 2014 the trust has brought creativity into many Rotorua children's lives but insufficient funding has meant it is no longer financially viable.
Rotorua Children's Art House Trust chairwoman Karen Hunt said funding enabled the trust to pay tutor fees and buy materials which were supplemented by fees children paid to attend classes.
"If you can't get enough trust funding in then we can't operate and sadly we're at the point where we have been unsuccessful in applying for funding.
"We have continued to apply for it but sadly the funders turned us down. So we're in the position we are unable to continue to offer classes." The trust applied every term for funding and had been unsuccessful in the past two terms.
For the past four years the trust was the recipient of several donations that made up the shortfall because the children's fees were not enough to pay the co-ordinator's salary.
Hunt said although the holiday programmes were popular the class numbers in the term time were too low.
Children's Art House official opening in March 2016. Photo / File
The Children's Art House director Maria Marshall was devastated to say goodbye to the Art House and the children who came with it.
Marshall described it as a "happy house" where she taught children alongside music teacher Glenys Courtney-Strachan who had recently moved to teach elsewhere.
"The love that is here, and people that don't know who we are, that haven't formed a relationship with us, they don't realise that Art House is good for children.
"It gives them freedom to be who they are.There are a lot of children who don't fit other programmes that have fitted our programmes."
Marshall believed the children who took part were gifted with art and said although the place was flexible it was also an educational place.
Although she said it had been hard to deliver the courses by herself because she couldn't help the children one on one when there were 12 of them.
She had lowered the number children coming in because she had no volunteer to help her.
"The holiday programmes have really taken off here and if I had more volunteer help it could've made all the difference.
"It's a perfect storm of what we could do if we had these resources."
Marshall said people were "absolutely aggrieved" at the news.
She had moved to Rotorua five years ago to study at Toi Ohomai and has enjoyed her experience in the city but understood it was time for her to move on.
She will deliver the last school holiday programme, Pirates Be Invadin, before the Art House closes its doors on February 1. Then she will travel across the ditch to be with her son in Perth.
"The philosophy of the Art House is to be kind and to create art and we've done that all the way through.
"It's such a shame, but I've spent a good amount of time crying and I'm not going to cry any more."
