About Us

Our Journey

Waterhouse Guild began as a seedling of an idea.

It was my daughter Hannah who planted the idea of Waterhouse Guild in my heart.

Once again, at the end-of-day pick-up, waiting in the long line of cars snaking next to the elementary building where my Hannah would skip out of the Kindergarten classroom with the other little ones, and, like every other day, the scene made my stomach drop ever so slightly, challenging me to imagine a scenario where school—all that education entails—might look different. Then, suddenly, Hannah was telling me a story at break speed as she opened the car door.

Smooching her as I buckled her up, “Hello to you too!”

“Mommy, didn’t you hear?” Samantha got SICK and threw up all over!”

“Oh my!”

“It’s okay Mommy. Stan paralyzed it.”

“He what?” I thought to myself.

And then I smiled.

Stan, the school janitor, had come into the classroom with his equipment and sterilized the floor.

What I realized right then and there is that, unfortunately, for some children—and my bright precocious daughter fell into this category—the bell-curve nature of traditional classroom learning does not always serve individuality, cannot blossom individual genius.

What I was discovering is that traditional education, in its effort to serve an enormous diversity of children, has by default created a sterile, one-size-must-fit-all offering.

This may not be a perfect analogy, but in thinking of the one-size-fits-all approach as something sterile, this got me to thinking that sterile environments are not natural. We are created, after all, to live with microbes. This is what makes our immunity strong.

Hannah, in that long-ago moment, taught me that when you sterilize something, there is the distinct possibility that you paralyze it.

The very next year, along with my friend Sara, and about four other families, I transformed our 600-square-foot-house by day to Waterhouse Guild, a place where 10 little children, Kindergarten through 4th grade could delight in the art of learning.

For more than 25 years, I kept busy bringing shape to this
idea—Waterhouse Guild—whose sole mission was to water the individual seed of genius in every child who crossed my path in a setting that was at once academically rigorous, cozy like home, and rich in opportunity to create.

And the journey was far from sterile, quite the contrary. Imagine a place where curiosity opened the child’s eyes to possibility, and you will be in our midst. You will bear witness to the important work we accomplished. Oh, the stories I can tell!

Here now, twenty-five years into the 21st Century, it’s time to expand the vision.

Waterhouse Guild will continue to support the creative endeavor through commissioned work, curation, publication, and education of the next generation of creative people with BIG ideas.

We imagine chapbooks of poetry, dance projects, photography, music, all manner of visual art, workshops, seminars, residencies, even small format podcasts—slowly, slowly, sky’s the limit. May our offerings, ebb and flow with the wonder of the never-ceasing tide.

– Kimberly Bredberg