Our mission: Common Good is an inclusive community in North Lexington dedicated to whole families. We create a safe space for our community to know love. Our vision: We want to see thriving students, strong families and flourishing neighborhoods live into their God-given potential.

Laura and John Gallaher started Common Good in 2011 after spending time living near and connecting with families in North Lexington. They felt a deep sense of belonging and decided to create a place for their neighbors to feel the same. Their passion and dedication opened Common Good’s doors to whole families craving an inclusive community to learn and rediscover their true selves. Common Good is more than an after-school program. We invest in and meet students and families where they are. Through education, recreation, creativity, spiritual formation, and meaningful relationships, students and families feel safe and loved. From that space of support, leaders emerge. Whether you are a student, parent, mentor, team member, or donor, we hope you feel the love and warmth from Common Good. It’s because of you that we can cultivate seeds of transformation in our community.

• Public Art

Common Good Community Development Corporation requests $10,000 to support Matchstick Goods, an arts-based social enterprise that employs and mentors youth in North Lexington through the production of handmade ceramics.
The program aligns with three of LexArts' FY27 priority areas: Youth Arts Engagement, through paid apprenticeship, mentorship, and youth-led teaching; Arts Equity, through access to arts employment for young people in a historically underserved neighborhood; and High-Quality Arts Programming, through the craftsmanship of the work itself.

Matchstick Goods operates out of the basement of Embrace Church at 1015 North Limestone. Six Common Good students and graduates work here: three Student Employees, two Studio Assistants, and one Studio Lead. Wages start at $12.94 an hour and rise with responsibility, to $14.39 for Studio Assistants and $16.56 for our Studio Lead, a Common Good graduate who now holds a permanent staff position. Students work about five hours a week during the school year and up to twenty hours a week in the summer. For most of them, this position is their first job.

Every piece we sell is made by hand from start to finish. Students roll and cut slabs, shape and join them by hand, refine the surfaces, and glaze. Our glazes are formulated and mixed in the studio, and everything is fired in our own kilns to cone 6. The bottom of each piece carries the signature of the student who made it.

The work extends past the making. Team members photograph products, write social posts, pack and ship orders, count inventory, sit in on partner meetings, run pop-up sales, and teach community workshops that are open to the public year-round. Every task is paired with training and an invitation to learn more. Students also help decide what we make, contributing new designs, reworking existing pieces, and deciding which slower-selling items to retire. In the first half of 2026, our team worked 1,831 hours, earned $26,322 in wages, made 798 pieces, and led five workshops for 49 community members.

Three parts of the program look different this year: the space we work in, how we make things, and how we plan and measure.

Studio space. In May 2025, Embrace Church provided us access to a second room in the basement, roughly doubling our usable production space from about 400 to 800 square feet. More people can work at once, and the new studio space is better suited to the relational work at the center of the program.

New production methods. Our three-year plan calls for a jigger/jolly setup, a technique that forms clay against a shaped profile as it turns on the wheel, cutting production time on simple forms while leaving every piece to be finished by hand. We purchased a wheel and a 3D printer at the start of 2026 and are working through the process now: designing profiles, printing molds, and testing them. The printer has also made custom stamps far easier to produce, and custom work has grown into our largest sales channel this year, at 56% of sales. For students, this is a new set of skills alongside the traditional ones: digital design, mold making, and the discipline of working to a client's specifications and deadline.

Planning and measurement. In 2025 we completed a formal visioning process. Board members, staff, our Executive Director, and two program members, Brisa Lopez and Juvalay Cornelio, took part; the process produced a three-year strategic plan that now guides decisions on finances, staffing, and programming. Alongside it we built a quarterly impact report tracking a consistent set of measures: hours worked, wages paid, workshops taught by students and graduates, skills trainings, promotions, products released and how many were student-designed, and graduates who go on to related fields. The report is published to our website, email list, and social media each quarter.

We also changed how we define sustainability. Measuring ourselves against a sales-only break-even would require scaling in ways that work against the mentorship at the center of the program, so we now aim instead for a funding mix: 55% of program income from sales, 35% from Common Good, and 10% from grants. Grant support is a permanent and intentional part of that model rather than a gap we expect to close.

In 2027 we will return to eight youth positions, launch a new workshop format designed and taught by students, and bring slip casting into production with student-designed pieces. Grant funds will support youth wages, clay and glaze materials, and the cost of running our public workshops and pop-up sales. LexArts has been a partner for five years, and much of what Matchstick is now was built thanks to Community Arts Development funding.

Matchstick Goods practices DePaul University's Asset-Based Community Development model, which builds community capacity by bringing those most affected by marginalization into decision-making. That extends to what we make: students shape our product designs, and our Soil & Stem collection blends Congolese and Mexican ceramic traditions.

Of the 18 students and graduates we have employed, 16 have been BIPOC. Common Good's board and executive leadership are 27% African American and 9% Latin American, and include two program graduates, Dieumerci Isidor and Dor'cas Kaindu. Diversity among Matchstick's three permanent staff remains a gap we weigh in every hire.

This year, staff and board developed written protocols and held facilitated conversations about changes affecting immigrant and refugee families in our community and how we respond.

Our recruitment audience is youth from North Lexington enrolled in Common Good's after-school program, along with program graduates. About 95% are BIPOC and 88% come from first-generation immigrant or refugee families, a group facing language barriers, economic hardship, and xenophobia. 80% qualify for free or reduced lunch, and roughly 95% of families live at or below the poverty level.

When a position opens, we talk with Common Good's program staff about which students to invite to apply. We look first for financial need or a lack of positive mentoring relationships, then for interest in the arts, particularly among students without another creative outlet, and finally for aptitude.

Our workshops and pop-up sales reach a second audience: Lexington residents and visitors who meet our student artists directly and engage with their art.

Matchstick Goods brings paid work, mentorship, and arts education to a part of Lexington that has limited access to all three.

The most direct benefit is income and experience for young people who face real barriers to employment. In 2025, our students and graduates worked 3,473 hours and earned $49,166 in wages. That money goes to households in a neighborhood where unemployment runs at 6.9% against a citywide average of 4.1%, shaped by white flight in the 1980s and 90s and by more recent gentrification.

The jobs themselves are unlike the entry-level work usually available to teenagers. A student here learns to build and finish a piece by hand, paint with glazes, load a kiln, photograph a product, price an order, talk to a customer, and teach a class. This year, one student is also learning digital design, 3D modeling, and mold making as we bring new production methods into the studio. Along the way they practice the skills that transfer anywhere: showing up, working with a supervisor, speaking in public, solving a problem in front of other people. Five promotions have been given since the program began, and eight students and graduates have stayed with us two years or longer. Four have gone on to pursue related fields in art, design, business, or entrepreneurship. Every employee leaves with a résumé, a reference, and work they can point to.

Our students and graduates make decisions that carry weight. They design products that go into production, took part in the visioning behind our three-year strategic plan, and help decide what we discontinue.

The community benefits in ways that reach past our team. Since 2024 we have held 26 workshops for roughly 250 participants, 21 of them led by students and graduates, in which community members build and glaze a piece alongside the young artists who made everything on the shelves. The studio is wheelchair accessible, and we have offered the class free of charge to the parents of Common Good students, with Common Good covering the cost. Our pop-up sales bring the team to churches, festivals, coffee shops, elementary schools, and state parks, creating conversations between young artists and Lexington residents that would not otherwise happen.

There is also a broader case for youth employment. Research indicates that youth employment programs can reduce violent crime among participants by as much as 45%, interrupting the path from school to incarceration. Within the wider Common Good ecosystem, 19 of 45 program graduates are currently pursuing college degrees and 14 have completed post-secondary education, including two master's degrees and one PhD. Those are incredible outcomes in a community where the great majority of families live at or below the poverty level.

Finally, the work itself is a contribution. Handmade pottery made in North Lexington, signed by the teenager who made it, sits in kitchens across the city and in shops from the Kentucky Artisan Center to Shaker Village.

We reach customers through Instagram and Facebook, where we post products, events, and studio work, and through paid ads on both platforms. Our website, matchstickgoods.com, carries our catalog, workshop registration, and program information, and is maintained in-house and promoted through the Google Ad Grant. Etsy brings in customers searching for specific items like ramen bowls and tortilla warmers. An email list reaches our closest supporters, and our quarterly impact report goes out on every channel.

We market both the work itself and the story behind it, depending on the product and the audience. Pop-ups and workshops remain our strongest outreach, putting student artists in front of people directly. This year, we will continue rephotographing our catalog and improving our website’s ease of use to grow online sales beyond Kentucky.

Matchstick Goods has been covered by LEX 18, Fox 56, WKYT, the Herald-Leader, and LexToday.

Our foundational partnership is with Embrace Church, which has donated our studio space since the program began and expanded it in May 2025, doubling our production capacity at no cost to the program.

Arts organizations have shaped our programming and our team's development. Institute 193, Broadway Clay, On-the-Move Art Studio, and the Living Arts & Sciences Center have provided programming opportunities for Common Good students, advice on arts initiatives, and help promoting our work. These connections give our students access to working artists well beyond what our small staff can offer.

Retail, wholesale, and custom clients create the market that pays our students' wages. Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Shaker Village, VisitLex, the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, Cup of Commonwealth, the Kentucky Artisan Center, Holly Hill & Co, the Greenery, FoodChain, and KY for KY have purchased products, carried our work, and supported our marketing. This year our largest custom orders came from Toyota, House of Marigold, FoodChain, and the Kentucky United Methodist Children's Home. Custom work is the fastest-growing part of our business, and each order is evidence for our team that people value what they make.

Pop-up hosts open the door to new audiences: North Lime Coffee & Donuts, Greyline Station, Centenary Church, Southern Hills UMC, Good Shepherd Episcopal, First United Methodist Downtown, Arlington Elementary, Mayfest in Gratz Park, and the Derby Week kickoff at the State Capitol.

Our program staff work alongside the Fayette County schools our students attend, including Bryan Station, Lafayette, Henry Clay, and Carter G. Woodson Academy as a way of checking in on their academic performance.
We have worked with marketing firms Cornett and Mediocre Creative, who have helped produce and promote materials.

The outcomes are economic, educational, and cultural: custom and wholesale relationships fund youth wages directly, arts partnerships give students mentorship we could not provide alone, and pop-ups and workshops put young artists from an under-resourced neighborhood in front of audiences across the city.

In the coming year we are pursuing partnerships that create new learning opportunities for our team, including connections with regional ceramics and arts programs, and building volunteer and internship pathways at the studio.

Matchstick Goods exists to employ and mentor young people, giving them a springboard for growth and space to explore ideas, abilities, and passions. Our goals for 2027 are drawn from year two of our three-year strategic plan:

1. Return to eight employment positions for Common Good students and graduates.
2. Launch one new workshop format, developed and taught by students and graduates.
3. Bring slip casting into production with one to two student-designed pieces, cross-training students in profile design, mold making, and casting.
4. Secure at least one collaborative project, outside training session, or mentoring connection for our team, and recruit volunteers to support workshops and pop-ups.
5. Grow sales revenue to $67,416, moving toward our target funding mix of 55% sales, 35% Common Good support, and 10% grants.
6. Publish four quarterly impact reports.

Employment. Payroll records and our employee tracking sheet log positions filled, hours worked, wages paid, and promotions, reviewed each quarter. Success is eight positions filled and held through the year.

New workshop format. Every workshop is logged by date, format, participant count, and which team members led it. Success is at least one format beyond our mug class on the calendar, developed and taught by students, with paying participants.

Slip casting. Products are tracked from design through release in our product log, recording which were student-designed. Success is one to two pieces fully in production and at least two students or graduates trained in the process. We compare production time per piece against handbuilt versions of the same form.

Partnerships and volunteers. We count collaborative projects, outside training sessions, and mentoring connections secured for the team, along with volunteers recruited and retained.

Revenue. Sales are tracked by channel in our internal revenue document and verified against the profit-and-loss statement, then reported against our plan's funding-mix targets.

Impact reports. The reports are the evidence, along with the metrics behind them: hours worked, wages paid, workshops led by students, trainings delivered, promotions given, products released, and graduates entering related fields.

Alongside these program-level measures, we will continue our quarterly check-ins with students. Each student rates themselves in 16 skill areas, from public speaking to handbuilding fundamentals, on how much they have grown and how well they feel they are performing, and answers open questions about what support they need. Results are reviewed with each employee, and the lowest scores set the next quarter's training agenda. Where our only tool was once a single end-of-summer survey, we now measure year-round, so shortfalls surface in time to respond with training or conversation.