WELCOME TO GINGERSNAP
Welcome to Gingersnap Inclusive Arts!
Gingersnap Inclusive Arts is a small, woman-operated nonprofit organization to help children and young adults with neurodiversity and mental health challenges such as anxiety learn how to manage some of these challenges through art.
Students may be placed in either small-group or individual art classes based on their particular needs and goals. Students need not have any particular talent or skill coming into class; the general goals are to expose students to materials, media, and artistic ideas in a safe environment.
For young students and young adults alike, all the goals and potential that are internalized in an art studio or anywhere art is created, are encompassed in the term 'studio mindset.' Studio mindset means you try to: persist, see alternatives, see that there is more than one solution to a problem, focus and concentrate, hold more than one complex idea in your brain at a time, express complex or contradictory thoughts, have a growth mindset, learn from your mistakes, make critical judgements, and explore.
Our students learn these strategies and skills by making art and take them into the wider world.
WHO WE ARE
Meet the women behind Gingersnap!
In 2023, Antonella and Miss Pin created Gingersnap Studio Arts to be able to continue to offer art and socialization opportunities to our very special clientele. In 2025, we gained our nonprofit status and became Gingersnap Inclusive Arts.
We work primarily with kids with autism and anxiety, but also kids who just love art because it allows them to have integrated groups and normalize varying behaviors to destigmatize them.
Art Director & Teacher
Antonella D'Aloia
Antonella is a teacher and professional artist with 30 years of experience working with children and creating art. She started teaching early childhood/ pre-K in Hopedale, MA. Simultaneously, she worked with local decorators and designers creating custom artwork for numerous homes and businesses. 20 years ago, one of the art commissions brought her to The Ledges, a residential facility for developmentally delayed adults. Her interactions with the residents while painting a mural there resulted in a job offer to teach an art class to a group. Antonella has been teaching art for The Ledges since. In 2016, she also began working with a local nonprofit to be able to teach a younger neuro-diverse population.
At Gingersnap, she develops all of the curriculum based on the needs and goals of her students. She is the lead teacher in all art classes.
Volunteer
Linda Labonte
Linda, known as Miss Pin, comes to Gingersnap Inclusive Arts following a forty-year career in education in Vermont. Starting as a special educator following college, she taught for eleven years in Bennington and then continued teaching in Springfield which encompassed 16 years in Special Education, 14 years as a fifth grade teacher, and ten years working at the River Valley Technical Center as a tutor, curriculum writer, and substitute.
In 2018, she moved to Upton, MA, where she met the staff of a program for neuro-diverse children and young adults housed next door. Her Great Dane, Gloria Gladys, who had trained as a support animal with school children in Vermont, began working with some of the clients, and from there Miss Pin began working there as well.