The history of Positive Fields:
Started in Troup County, GA in 2017, Positive Fields, Inc is a unique nonprofit arts education enterprise. We provide the residents of our rural communities a barrier-free entry into the industrial and digital arts.
We contribute mentorship and guidance with technical arts training, and bring the positive experience of arts-oriented entrepreneurial thinking, training, and making into our community.
We want to make technology fun to learn and use, and empower artisans and craftspeople by providing free access to equipment that otherwise would be too expensive to access. We’re here to strengthen our community by sharing and promoting the rewards of learning, creating, and appreciation for the arts.
Our director: Grady Sain
Our director, Grady Sain, saw a dire need in the rural Southern communities he grew up in: vanishing industrial arts education and the lack of easy access to digital arts technology.
Grady has a 30 year career in the visual and digital arts. For over 8 years he traveled the world working for clients such as Microsoft, Google, Disney, and Coca-Cola creating high tech digital experiences. He became acutely aware of the cultural and economic divides that separated the cities of technology and innovation he lived in, and the small rural communities he came from.
A simple but powerful idea was born- he wanted to create a culture of self-motivated learning to help bridge that divide. It should be an easy, fun, and rewarding way for people of all ages to gain access to the equipment and educational programs he saw in urban communities across the country: known as the maker movement.
Positive Fields is the result of that vision- a freely accessible makerspace and arts education center.
