BEAM CENTER INC
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Mission Statement
Beam Center’s mission is to crystallize self-directed growth through ambitious, collaborative project-making. We support and celebrate young people as producers of learning, culture, and change who take bold steps towards meaningful futures and help guide compassionate, equitable, and vibrant communities. Beam Center aims to help New York City kids and teens set and achieve ambitious goals in school, at work, and in life by making mentorship, creation, and collaboration central to their out-of-classroom learning and college or work-preparatory experiences. At Beam Center, we believe that engaging all young people to unlock their own potential and to continue towards a career path or continued education is an issue of social and economic justice.
About This Cause
Beam Center partners with NYC youth, artists, and educators to build spectacular projects rooted in real-world purpose. Young people gain skills in teamwork, leadership, STEM, hands-on tools, digital technology, and collaboration. While exploring their agency as creative makers and thinkers, we invite youth to further articulate their personal dreams and identities and discover skills for their professional futures. We currently operate four programming initiatives: Youth Employment Enterprises: Project Leaders, Project Production, Digital Futures - Our Youth Employment Enterprises welcome and connect youth to paid training and employment experiences in and out of Beam Center by communicating opportunities through school and agency partners. The Project Leader Enterprise provides contracted STEM enrichment programming to schools and community-based organizations in a variety of settings, including afterschool settings, street fairs, festivals and day camps. Project Leaders are graduates of our Apprenticeship program. In their tenure, Project Leaders develop annual project themes, brainstorm and prototype projects, develop lesson plans, and facilitate projects for younger students. Through SYEP, Work Learn Grow, and other program partnerships, 90% of Project Leaders receive school credit. Project Production participants are older youth who are integral to the building of our annual large scale art projects. Each year they assist the selected lead artist in the process of prototyping and installing the final project. In partnership with the Susan Crown Exchange and our youth community members, Beam Center addressed the lack of genuine youth voice in the research space by launching Digital Futures, a research program in which youth conduct their own original research and develop tools for sharing their knowledge with their peers. In 2019 to 2020 Beam engaged 350 youth, ages 14-24, in paid remote and in-person programs that prepared them to thrive in the 21st Century workplace. Youth Training: Teen Apprenticeship Program - Beam Center’s Apprenticeship is a credit-bearing and/or paid in- or out-of-school program that prepares youth for interest-led employment by fostering a youth-centered, cooperative and social learning environment. Youth participants are introduced to the fundamentals of designing, leading and building STEAM projects, then are offered next step options beyond Beam and connections to employment in Beam Enterprises. School Partnerships - Beam’s public school partnerships provide an alternative approach to traditional in-class instruction, offering new ways to connect with and engage students in curriculum through project-based learning, incorporate new relationships, tools and materials, and create new learning opportunities for both students and teachers. In-school Beam projects are tangible expressions of student learning that connect the knowledge of the way things are made to the student’s agency over their lives and futures. Beam Camp/Beam Camp City - Beam Camp was founded to provide underserved children with exciting experiences in creative problem-solving through working with their hands and actively collaborating with others, focusing on skill-building, collaborative challenge, responsibility, and mentorship. Since then, Beam Camp has guided 1000+ campers to cultivate hands-on skills while exploring innovative thinking, design and the creative process. Beam Camp City launched in Summer 2021, bringing Beam Center’s summer enterprise to Governors Island and expanding our reach to two distinct locations. At Beam Camp and Beam Camp City, campers and staff build a spectacular large-scale collaborative project chosen through an annual worldwide design competition.