OUR VISION

To provide young people the opportunity to explore their creative voices and experiences, find inclusive pathways through the arts and media to meaningful social, educational and economic empowerment, and enable them to grow to enrich our communities with their full potential realized, regardless of social or economic disadvantage.

OUR MISSION

Through workshops and residencies we advance the creative arts and society through inclusion and meaningful social, educational and economic engagement of disadvantaged youth in America’s Post-Industrial Communities. Through the establishment of an incubator artist residency in New York City for youth, we will build a collaborative community to support first generation creatives from these regions as they prepare to enter the emerging idea based economy. We actively cultivate a broad range of innovative educational platforms and programs in the arts, media and the humanities that will create pathways for these youths to find and explore their creative voices and experiences, while immersed in the arts, media, history and culture of a thriving urban environment. To support our mission, we engage in practical strategies to nurture and strengthen these creative explorations as they form the foundation of empowerment that is essential to enable disadvantaged youth to build a stronger social and economic future.

Non Profit Status

” A Little Creative Class Inc. ” is a not for profit organization granted 501c3 IRS status and can accept tax deductable donations.

What We Do

Located in Maspeth, Queens, A Little CC provides creative workshops that utilize a unique blend of storytelling and creative development through creating a personal scrapbook for the young people who participate and will culminate for some in a residency for young people from economically disadvantaged communities through out upstate New York. The residency will allow these young people the cultural exposure that has proven to be a vital gateway when considering the possibility of life in a creative field. Mentor partners from across the vast landscape of innovation in the five boroughs of New York City form a ground up, macro family style model, that best addresses the challenges unique to marginalized youth as they become orientated to a wider array of cultural and social possibilities. We support holistic immersion in the culture of creative practice with the goal of growing a network to forge a broader intersection between creativity, economic growth, and social inclusion that will extend back to the young people’s home communities. Residencies will be awarded through a series of nomination processes from schools, community and church organizations, the many branches of the juvenile detention system, and additional relationship building workshops to be held through out upstate, New York. A Little Creative Class, Inc. has been formed in response to the ongoing economic and cultural shift that has had a particularly negative impact in post- industrial communities through out the United States. We have taken further inspiration from urban theorists, economists and human rights organizations who recognize that a key to understanding this cultural reformation is exploring the ways that a thriving creative economy has replaced our once powerful manufacturing economy as a vehicle for economic and social rebirth.  Research confirms that as the income gap continues to widen nationally, the number of jobs in the creative economy continues to grow, however the social isolation inherent to some of the communities who would benefit most is itself a barrier to entry. According to a 2015 study by The Regional Alliance for a Creative Economy in Upstate New York, The Capital Region has the second highest concentration of creative jobs among metropolitan regions of similar size, however the report also states, one a of biggest challenges remains in failure to “reach across socioeconomic boundaries”…” We are building ” A Little Creative Class, Inc. in our home State of New York, with the hope that it will become to be a model to inspire new approaches to addressing a wider array of social and cultural barriers that perpetuate class inequity in the United States.