THE CRUCIBLE
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Mission Statement
The Crucible inspires creative exploration and expression through welcoming, hands-on arts education and experiences for people of diverse ages and backgrounds. As an innovative hub built around the industrial arts, The Crucible is a catalyst for individual growth and vibrant community connections. A leader in the Bay Area arts community, The Crucible is widely recognized for its exceptional learning experiences, rich and varied arts programs, skilled and committed faculty, and unparalleled educational facilities.
About This Cause
The Crucible team has been hard at work fulfilling our mission of making the industrial arts accessible to all, coming back from the impacts of COVID-19 on our community, and working to make our organization operate in more consistent, transparent, and equitable ways. This brief is an update for board members, staff, and funders that can provide opportunities for reflection, discussion, and talking points. The areas we cover are: Compensation, Training, Equity & Inclusion, and HR: Increased salaries, improved equity & inclusion practices, and greater professional development opportunities for all faculty and staff; addition of HR Consultant. Facility Upgrades and OSHA Certifications: Building improvements to core departments, including Woodworking, Bike, Welding, Glass Blowing, Glass Flameworking, and Ceramics as well as our public restrooms plus additional safety training for Studio staff. Bike Shop Expansion: Build-out that empowered us to refocus the Bike Department as an emerging West Oakland community hub with transportation equity, bike entrepreneurship, and climate justice as levers; Workforce Development Programs: Growing emphasis on building entrepreneurship and career pathways for older teens and adults; Youth Industrial Arts Program: Rebuilding enrollment in our ongoing classes, camps, integrated school partnerships, and leadership programming. Educational Response Vehicle (ERV): a fire truck converted into a mobile classroom, ERV provides STEM/STEAM demonstrations and hands-on learning opportunities to Title 1 school partners and community events.Facility Upgrades and OSHA Certifications We leveraged pandemic-related closures to make extensive improvements to our building. We doubled the size of our Wood Shop and set up a woodturning area, expanded and redesigned our Bike Shop, and relocated our ARC Welding equipment. In Fall 2022, we restored the furnace and three glory holes in our Glass Blowing Department, performing extensive work to restore our controller, gas lines, and regulator. In January 2022, we turned on the system that had been unused since March 2020. We performed four additional improvement projects: A full renovation of the Glass Flameworking Department with new seating, venting, and torches; A Ceramics Department expansion with a new kiln, slab roller, and nine pottery wheels; The installation of a new fume extractor system to support venting from the ARC Welding Department, and A complete renovation of our public restrooms, which had not been touched since the 1970s. Much of this work was done by Crucible Studio staff with others brought in as needed. Studio staff also received extensive training in first aid, fire safety, scissor-lift and forklift operation, and OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 certifications, depending on the role. A small but significant amount of funding from funders was allocated to support these projects, especially the personnel costs. Bike Shop Expansion This year, The Crucible’s Community Bike Program has gained momentum. In 2022, we launched Open Shop Hours, a free, weekly clinic where residents can drop off bikes for repair or maintenance. These bikes are additionally used as teaching tools for faculty, participants, and volunteers to teach and learn bike mechanics and build community. We now have a solid core of technicians and volunteers involved in this program. We have continued our free, weekly Earn-A-Bike program for local youth ages 8-18, where they can build/repair a bike for themselves and donate a second back to the program. Earn-A-Bike also functions as a recruitment tool that draws local youth into the Bike Programs and other disciplines with several youths advancing to the Fuego Youth Leadership Program. Heading into Fall 2022, we will build and repair bike carts for our community partner, Mandela Grocery, to use to deliver groceries to community members experiencing food scarcity. We are also partnering with City Slicker Farms to offer free bike repair and flat fix clinics as well as a youth bike giveaway. With funding from the City of Oakland, we will expand our bike education programs, bike repair clinics, and other bike-related services to build out a West Oakland Bike Hub, and will host two young people from the local community as paid Bike Repair Interns who will support piloting an electric bike building and repair program. Workforce Development Programs Even before COVID-19 hit, The Crucible had been exploring ways to deepen career pathways and create jobs and revenue opportunities for youth and adults. In December 2021, we launched Open For Business, a pilot program funded by Wells Fargo, and in partnership with SFMade that acts as an incubator for local BIPOC entrepreneurs launching businesses in the creative economy. This program is on track to be a resounding success with 100% of pilot participants completing the program and expanding their product lines and growing their sales. We plan to continue this program in 2023. In December 2021, we also revamped GIFTY, our annual in-person holiday bazaar featuring handmade goods from local artisans. We reserved 20% of our vending space for local BIPOC entrepreneurs and raised $5,000 to support scholarships for BIPOC vendors. Several of our new vendors had never sold at a show of this size, and even cleared their inventory! Recognizing how closely aligned entrepreneurial and job skills can be, we have also developed a new program for high school students, CNC Digital Entrepreneurship Academy. This program builds on our teen Fuego Youth Leadership program and our partnerships with four Title 1 Oakland High Schools by offering teens instruction in digital fabrication and CNC operation that they can use both to create artisan goods to sell at the same time they are building skills that will support living-wage jobs as CNC operators – one of the fastest growing fields in the industrial sector. We have also been partnering with other groups in Oakland to support building active marketplaces for our artisan entrepreneurs, including the E14 Gallery in Old Oakland, and Akoma Market in East Oakland. We have also revised our annual GIFTY craft holiday show to make it more reflective of local and emerging artists at The Crucible and in the community. Youth Industrial Arts Program In 2021-2022, The Crucible served 1,500 low-income youth of color from Oakland by providing school day, weekend, after-school, summer, and community-based demonstrations and hands-on workshops exposing youth to STEM/STEAM skills and the transformative power of art. 200 youth received more than 15 hours of hands-on learning each. We worked closely with schools including McClymonds, Rudsdale Continuation, and Arise High Schools, Emiliano Zapata Street Academy, West Oakland Middle School, and KIPP Bridge Academy, and with community groups, such as EBAYC and Civic Design Studio to deliver programs. In Summer 2021, two of our Fuego Youth Leaders specialized in Bike Design and Fabrication – a first in the program’s history. In Summer 2022, another Fuego Youth Leader is specializing in bikes. We also incrementally increased our Fuego Youth Leadership Program enrollment from five youth in 2020 to 12 youth in 2021 and to 11 youth in 2022. We have almost concluded our first full summer camp program since 2019, engaging more than 600 young people, and awarding more than 100 scholarship seats. ERV The Crucible’s Educational Response Vehicle (ERV), is a fire truck converted into a mobile classroom that provides STEM/STEAM learning activities and industrial arts demonstrations to school sites and community events. To date, ERV has successfully performed the following outreach: April 21, 2022 - ERV made its first public appearance at the Old Oakland Block Party, a 4-block-long art market with a focus on family activities featuring art-making exhibits and displays, 40+ local vendors, music, performances, and dancing. We used the event as a test run for ERV, providing demonstrations with 7 Crucible faculty in Blacksmithing and Glass Blowing reaching an audience of ~200 people (all ages). May 21, 2022 - The Crucible held its annual fundraiser in support of youth programs, The Fire & Light Soirée, and Art Auction at the Oakland California Museum of Art. We used the event as a second test run for ERV, providing demonstrations with 8 Crucible faculty in Blacksmithing, Glass Blowing, and Flame Effects reaching an audience of ~300 people (ages 18+). June 2, 2022 - The Crucible completed its first successful Title 1 site visit at Maya Lin Elementary School serving 78, 4th and 5th-grade students (ages 9-11). Activities included The Crucible’s Bike Department providing learning on how to fix flat tires, maintain gears, safety tips, and useful cyclist hacks. Our Machine Shop instructed youth on how to build gears. Our Jewelry Shop provided instruction in Mexican Hojalata tin art. The day ended with a demonstration of ERV’s onboard flame effects. June 15, 2022 - ERV promoted The Crucible’s scholarship programs to East Oakland community members at the 15th Annual Juneteenth Celebration and Festival hosted by the Akoma Market in Liberation Park in East Oakland, CA in collaboration with the Black Cultural Zone reaching an audience of ~200 people (all ages). Looking Ahead to 2023 In 2023, The Crucible would welcome continued investment from funders in our mission and projects. Contributed income and donor support have made a huge difference in our work to address economic and educational inequities and the lack of access for low-income and BIPOC individuals and families to the fine and industrial arts and trades. In 2022, we worked with over 6,000 youth, adults, and families and we hope to increase both our reach and our impact in 2023.