Alpha Workshops brings two very disparate worlds--supportive employment and high-end interior design--together under one roof. Conceived by Ken Wampler in 1995 to improve the quality of life for people living longer--and healthier--with HIV/AIDS, Alpha Workshops provides training and employment in a creative field in a professional, flexible work environment that accommodates the special needs of its staff and helps them regain financial and emotional stability. We are also a wonderful resource for interior designers who need custom painting, gilding, and finishing or a one of a kind project. Our work can be seen throughout the newly renovated Gracie Mansion as well as other prominent homes and businesses throughout the New York metropolitan area while its wallpapers and lamps are in homes and businesses throughout the country.
Based in the Chelsea area of Manhattan, Alpha Workshops trains people with HIV/AIDS in a range of the decorative arts. Students in each 10-week Basic Training session, on average about six to ten people, come from a range of educational backgrounds. While some, have professional training in related creative fields, quite a number of the people Alpha has trained have no design or related work experience. During the 10 weeks of Basic Training, taught by our specialists, trainees learn gilding, decorative paint finishes and faux finishes, color theory, and wallpaper design and production.
Wampler, whose background is in theater and design, spent the late 1980s and early 1990s at the AIDS Resource Center developing supportive housing for homeless people living with HIV. Wanting to integrate his early career with his present one, he began searching for a way to combine his creative skills in decorative painting with his knowledge of social work and the supportive housing field. Inspired by the Omega Workshops, the early 20th-century decorative arts collective founded by the noted English critic Roger Fry, and aware of the numerous creative people living with HIV/AIDS, Wampler began to formulate the idea for The Alpha Workshops. "I knew there were lots of talented people living in supportive housing, many of whom were looking for the chance to focus their talents," he says. "The Alpha Workshops represents an opportunity to build their identities around their work rather than around their illness." He canvassed his contacts in the fields of supportive housing, employment training, and the design industries, and then assembled an advisory board of professionals both inside and outside the design industry. Then Alpha Workshops began at the beginning, with paper donated by Materials for the Arts and paints donated by Golden Acrylics: "We started out painting paper, because that's all we had," Wampler says.
Since its inception, Alpha has gone from two employees and earned income of $7,000 to a current staff of 35 and earned income in 2005 of over $600K. That represents well over half of our total current budget. In the beginning, our clients included a few interior designers, retailers and private individuals. Now, Alpha has expanded its reach deep into the design community and beyond. The Alpha Workshops has done work for corporations such as Benjamin Moore, Lifetime Television, eBay, Jones Apparel Group and Origins cosmetics. The work of our staff artists can be seen in the New York mayoral residence, Gracie Mansion and the ballroom at the Prince George Hotel, as well as multiple designer showhouses and luxury homes throughout the New York metro area. In 2002, Alpha was the recipient of the Elle Deco International Design Award, has been featured in magazines such as Metropolitan Home, House & Garden, Interior Design and O at Home and several of their designs are in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Alpha was chosen for inclusion in Metropolitan Home's "Design 100" in 2001. In 2004, Alpha received the Community Hall of Fame Award from WNET, Channel 13 in New York.