We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Valeen Bhat. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Valeen below.

Hi Valeen, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I started my company when I was 24 years old after I struggled to find an interesting and exciting position in 2006. After graduating with a master’s degree in Art & Design Education from Pratt Institute, the only jobs I found seemed to focus more on the parent’s expectations, rather than what excited their children. I wanted to create a program that started with children and their exploration of art, while also allowing myself the freedom to listen to my students and modify my projects and program around them. That core value is still central to Private Picassos and all of our classes, whether for children or adults. I encourage all of my Art Teachers to get to know their students and design every element of their lesson plan around them. I always want my staff and students to feel as though their ideas and opinions matter and are valued.

Valeen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Private Picassos is a virtual & in-person art studio, creating art experiences for kids and adults throughout the world. We bring our expertise in visual art education to our students in their homes, schools, camps, cultural venues and our Art Studio in Brooklyn, NY.

We believe in the intrinsic power of the arts and strive to help build confidence in our students.
In addition to refining our students’ fine motor skills, our program also improves their verbal and visual vocabularies and helps them discover new and exciting art techniques. All of our classes focus on exploration of materials and creative problem-solving rather than mimicry of art mechanics. We emphasize art instruction grounded in the intuitive elements of the fine arts. This philosophy provides our students with a better appreciation of their own thoughts and abilities.

All of Private Picassos’ art instructors have extensive experience teaching art to students of all ages, and almost all have degrees in art education. Many of our competitors hire artists, rather than art teachers. This distinction is very important; not only have our art teachers been trained in formal art pedagogy, but they have also made a conscious decision to teach art to children and adults.

We have built a strong reputation by consistently delivering high quality programming at our client’s convenience and have been recognized by online, television and print publications, including the TODAY Show, PIX11 News, The New York Times, Crain’s New York Business, NY Family Magazine and Best Art Class in the 2017 KidPass Parent’s Choice Awards!

Our program is offered virtually throughout the world and in-person throughout the Tri-State area, including New York City, Long Island, Westchester, and Northern NJ. We also offer museum tours and art birthday parties, as well as programming for parents, corporate teams and adult students.

Have you ever had to pivot?

After a few years of slowly growing my business, I decided to quit my part time job as an Administrative Coordinator for a small non-profit and go full time with my private clients. This happened to be Spring of 2008, just a few months before the Great Recession. Suddenly that September, rather than continuing with all of the clients I had built up for 2 years, I was left with no private students and no part time job. I quickly pivoted to offer group art classes at a local kids’ store that was renting out classroom space. Within a few months, I had a growing following at this one location and was adding more stores/locations around NYC. This model was very different than the one I had originally designed for Private Picassos, but it proved to be a saving grace at a time when money was tight for many parents, but they still wanted high-quality programming for their kids. I eventually used this experience to reach out to local schools and began offering after-school classes around NYC. Our school partnerships are now a large portion of our program and income and I’m so grateful that this one pivot brought us in this direction.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

One great piece of advice I was given early on was to keep our social media presence in my personal voice. I think a lot of businesses hire social media managers, which can bring in more followers, but can also feel hollow. For years, I slowly built up our followers by posting about our classes, showed behind the scenes footage of the prep and organization that goes into our program, etc.

As I became a parent in 2016, this gave me new insight into what my clients wanted to see (as I was now in the same boat!) The posts that got the most interactions were always related to my own struggles and wins with my son, especially when it came to art making at home. Throughout the pandemic, I expanded this further and posted resources that I was using to help other parents keep their kids entertained at home.

I have now enlisted the help of two of my amazing art teachers to create more content for our social media pages. In having actual art teachers create this content, we are still keeping our social media presence in the “voice” of Private Picassos.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.privatepicassos.com
• Instagram: @privatepicassos
• Facebook: @privatepicassos
• Linkedin: @privatepicassos
• Twitter: @privatepicassos
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/private-picassos-brooklyn-2