He showed up, and kept showing up
Aidan founded Palettes for Possibilities in 2023, his freshman year at SAR High School, while volunteering at The Bristal, an assisted living facility in Englewood, NJ. Talking with residents, he learned that many had once been artists, teachers, and creative people who had stopped making art — not because they couldn't, but because no one was making space for it.
So he pitched an art program to the facility's lifestyle director, got a yes, and showed up with pencils and paper. Sessions started once a month. Then a resident told him that before developing Parkinson's, he had been an art major — and that Aidan had put a pencil in his hand for the first time in 50 years. That was enough to keep going.
Sessions moved from monthly to weekly, and he began recruiting other student volunteers. Lessons are broken into manageable steps and adapted to each resident's abilities, because, as an old teacher once told him, there are no mistakes in art. Since then, the program has grown into chapters across the country, each run by local student volunteers.
