Festival continues mission to empower young artists through strategic community partnerships

The Coconut Grove Arts Festival (CGAF) has awarded $10,000 to Comic Kids, a Miami-based nonprofit that brings free drawing classes, art supplies, and educational resources to children in need across South Florida. The donation reinforces CGAF’s year-round commitment to nurturing the community’s next generation of creative talent. 

“For over six decades, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival has been built on the belief that a thriving arts community begins with investing in young artists,” says David Hill, Jr., Chairman of the Coconut Grove Arts Festival. “Comic Kids feeds that pipeline, giving kids who might never have access to formal art education the tools to discover their creative potential. This is exactly the kind of innovative, grassroots program we’re proud to champion.” 

Founded in 2018 by Miami fine art dealers Reed and Kat Horth, Comic Kids serves children ages 5-12 in pediatric hospitals, foster care, homeless shelters, and underserved schools throughout the region. The organization teaches drawing skills through popular comics, cartoons, and books, using characters children know and love as entry points to advanced techniques like perspective, shading, scale, and color rendering.

Reed Horth, who was himself a participant in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program as a child, found his love for reading, writing, and illustrating through comics. His early exposure to drawing and reading led to degrees in art history and journalism from the University of Florida and eventually to a career in fine art. Together with his wife, Kat, he founded Comic Kids to bring quality art education to communities that need it most.

“What impressed us about Comic Kids is how they’ve reached thousands of children since 2018 with a model that’s both scalable and deeply local,” said CGAF Executive Director Camille Marchese. “They meet children exactly where they are—whether virtually, in after-school programs, or in foster care—and provide personalized, professional-level instruction that builds true artistic vision and confidence.”

According to Kat Horth, “This support from CGAF comes at a pivotal time for us. We’ve been working with the Ryan Seacrest Foundation and Nicklaus Children’s Hospital to bring our programs to kids who need them most, and now we can expand that reach. The award will fund Spanish-language instructional videos, opening our programs to many more families in Miami. CGAF understands that language accessibility isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential to our mission of making art free and accessible to children in need.”

Comic Kids allows schools and community organizations to host classes via smartboards with minimal resources—just pencil, paper, and coloring materials. The organization offers several class formats, including “Read + Draw” for ages 5–9, which combines reading popular books with drawing their characters, and “Comic and Cartoon” classes focused on characters from favorite movies, TV shows, comics, and graphic novels.

The Coconut Grove Arts Festival’s $10,000 donation will help Comic Kids expand its reach by funding art supplies, class materials, and programming for children across Miami-Dade County. The contribution is part of a broader portfolio of CGAF initiatives designed to educate and mentor emerging artists in the area.

For information about Comic Kids, visit www.comickids.org or email comickidsorg@gmail.com. To learn more about the Coconut Grove Arts Festival’s community programs or to donate, visit cgaf.com/initiatives or contact Camille Marchese at camille@cgaf.com or by calling 305-447-0401.

About The Coconut Grove Arts Festival

For more than six decades years, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival has been dedicated to cultivating future generations of artists. As a nonprofit 501(c)(3), the organization champions South Florida’s arts community through educational programs and by hosting one of the nation’s premier outdoor art festivals. Proceeds fund year-round initiatives including scholarships, the Visiting Artists Program, and the Next Generation Emerging Artist Program. Learn more at cgaf.com.