Here at The Army Painter, we believe in spreading the joys of the miniature painting hobby to as many people as possible - a passion shared by The Hero Workshop. We recently partnered with them by sending a veritable dragon's horde worth of GameMaster sets to help provide the best mini painting experience possible to all the kids who frequent their after-school programs.
So, what exactly is The Hero Workshop and what do they do? Well, we figured it would be best to let Scott Stevens, the founder of this amazing organization, answer that himself!
Hi Scott, can you tell us a bit about what The Hero Workshop is?
Scott: The Hero Workshop is a non-profit located in Culver City, CA (right in the middle of LA) that focuses on organizing and running tabletop games for kids and teens. We host over 36 games a week at our community center, where we provide professional Game Masters, a space to play with all of the toys (music, minis, maps, dice, etc…) and help ensure that there are plenty of other heroes to share the table with.
How did The Hero Workshop get started?
Scott: Organically at first. I had recently moved to Culver City from the San Francisco Bay Area with my family for a job as a video Game Designer. My oldest son was 8 at the time, and the move meant that he had to move away from his friend group that he had known since preschool. To make matters worse, he broke his arm almost immediately! I was worried that he would have trouble meeting new friends since he couldn’t play at recess, so I made little cards for him to pass around at school inviting other kids to play Dungeons and Dragons. The first game we ran, 5 kids showed up to play.
The next time we played, 11 kids showed up. My son’s teacher heard about our game and suggested that I start an afterschool program. So, in the beginning I would just take a long lunch, go to the school and play DnD with the kids for an hour, then go back to finish up my workday. That one game turned into two, then four.
I once had to travel internationally for my job, so I hired someone to run the games while I was out of town. That went well, so together we started building out the program and adding more kids every month. Now, about four years later, we have recently opened our second brick-and-mortar location - a beautiful 3100sq ft community center located within walking distance of 3 elementary schools, a middle school and a high school. Each week, we run games for over 220 kids at their schools, at our community center, and we even have one international game online. We currently employ 9 people - 7 professional Game Masters, our Admin Cleric, and a Program Director.
How are miniature painting and ranges like the GameMaster sets incorporated at The Hero Workshop?
Scott: I love themed paint kits! To be completely honest, one of my favorite aspects of the hobby is collecting and painting minis. My wife often jokes that I needed to open a game store, so we’d have somewhere to put them all.
I enjoy working with themed kits because they provide the right amount of structure to get the creative process going. Sometimes “you can do anything!” is too much choice, you know? I love taking a set of parameters and finding an unexpected way to present a finished project by breaking the rules inherent in the materials at hand. Use the lava paints to create flaming hair, glue terrain sand and grass tufts to the troll’s back, crimp the razorwire and paint it to create a lightning effect, stuff like that.
We are sharing our love of painting minis with our community in the form of our weekly Paint Hours at our Mini Bar at the community center (the Mini Bar being where we set up our mini painting stations). Showing the heroes in our program tips and tricks they can use to bring what they see in their heads to the table is super rewarding. As we develop our new Game Master Workshop to train the next generation of fantastic GMs - we are seeing that same spark of creativity present itself in the small tabletop worlds that they are literally creating. It’s pretty cool!
Can you tell us a bit about how The Army Painter's sponsorship has helped you?
Scott: The Army Painter is a HERO tier sponsor, HERO sponsors go beyond sponsoring individuals, and are helping out with our group activities. This includes but is not limited to our Hero to Hire employment program (where The Hero Workshop is able to support teens and young adult members of our community with their first summer jobs), our Teen Volunteer program, and specifically in the case of The Army Painter, our Painting Parlor.
In addition, the nature of the contribution from The Army Painter has allowed us to introduce one of my favorite aspects of the hobby - miniature painting - to dozens of kids in our community. We have added Miniature Painting Workshops to our summer camp programming, where we introduce participants to painting techniques such as drybrushing and washes, detail work and painting realistic metallic components for armor and props.
We went from having a kind of nice painting program to having an AMAZING painting program! Thank you to The Army Painter from all of us here at The Hero Workshop!
What can our readers do if they want to help support you?
Scott: We have recently stepped up our fundraising efforts to help us bridge the financial gap between moving out of our old 450sq ft space into our new 3100sq ft community center. We plan to add between 50-150 new heroes to our program over the next year, but in the meantime, we are struggling to make ends meet with memberships alone.
The Hero Workshop is a 501c3 non-profit organization, which means that contributions made to The Hero Workshop are tax deductible. If anyone out there would like to contribute to our program, they can visit the DONATIONS page of our website.
I cannot understate enough how appreciative we are of anyone who is able to support us!
One-time donations are greatly appreciated as they will help us out in the short term - bridging that gap in revenue that I indicated above. To go a step further, sustaining contributions (monthly) allows us to offer more scholarships for kids who need a little help affording our standard membership. We will never turn a kid away from the table, and sustaining memberships allow us to continue our program even when not everyone is able to pay.
What does the future look like for The Hero Workshop?
Scott: We have developed a great program here, and we look forward to branching out and sharing it with more kids! Our future plans involve branching out to new locations - anywhere with a concentration of schools or a lot of residential should have a safe place for kids to gather, form friendships, and pretend to be wizards together!
In the meantime, we are moving into our new community center and expanding our program offering to grow into it! We’re adding some different game systems (Tales of the Valiant, Kids on Brooms, Stars without Number, and Daggerheart to name a few), new games altogether (Magic, Warhammer, Mobile Strike Zero), and of course new settings such as Historic Campaigns (I’ve got a WW2 campaign ready to go called The Greatest Campaign), Game Master Workshops, and Adventures in Writing. We are also running events such as our monthly “Above the Table” discussions (think TED talks for tabletop gaming), our annual Hero Faire (summer camp carnival), and Family Game Nights.
If anyone is in Culver City, come by and visit The Hero Workshop! We’re having a great time, and anyone here will be happy to share their newest gaming passion with a new friend.
