The Utah Foster Care Chalk Art Festival 2024 is complete! Nobody melted and inspirational pieces were created! We had over 100 chalk artists, 40+ vendors, princesses, magicians, bands, a JoyMob performance, awards, and more. It was quite the 2-day event.
Some of our favorite highlights from the weekend included JoyMob spreading literal joy everywhere they went. They had the crowd up and dancing while chanting, ‘I’m beautiful, I’m brave, I matter, I love’. What important messages and a time to connect with each other!
Written by: Amy Smith – Foster Mom and Utah Foster Care Staff
A Tribute to Foster Parents
One of the chalk artists created and dedicated her chalk art to her foster mom. At the age of 17, Jenn entered foster care and found herself pregnant. Her foster mom advocated for her and helped her graduate high school, age out of the system, and empowered her to raise her child who just recently graduated from college. Jenn and her son beat the odds in every sense of the phrase. What a beautiful tribute to her foster mom of so many years ago!
Another chalk artist–a local foster parent–was scheduled to adopt their tween days after the festival ended. The couple met this young tween at a behavioral center where the foster mom worked and fell in love with her. The family took her in as a placement, and when reunification wasn’t possible, things moved towards adoption. Their chalk piece was a flying pig, the tweens requests, celebrating the pending adoption!
A Big Thanks to All Who Participated
We finished off the weekend with awards: chalk artists for their beautiful works of art and foster families for their dedication to kids in care throughout the years. Five families from across the state were honored as Foster Family of the Year in their region. Without phenomenal foster families like these, none of this would be possible! Our small amount of thanks is not nearly enough.
We want to thank every single person who was a part of this event. We hope that you saw a glimpse of how amazing our foster care community is and the need we have for more incredible foster parents. Vulnerable children in Utah deserve the very best and that is exactly what we aim to provide for them. Thank you for ‘chalking’ about foster care with us this year!
