Brooklyn Children's Museum - Teen Crew After School Program

FAIN: ZH-252999-17

Brooklyn Children's Museum (Brooklyn, NY 11213-1900)
Petrushka Bazin Larsen (Project Director: May 2016 to August 2017)
Daniela Fifi (Project Director: August 2017 to February 2018)
Hana Elwell (Project Director: February 2018 to March 2024)

Expansion of an apprenticeship and college preparatory program, Teen Crew, for 60 teens over the summer and 80 teens during the academic year.

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum (BCM) seeks $100,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to help establish a term endowment to support BCM’s Teen Crew. BCM will leverage over 30 years of experience providing humanities-based career, technical, and college readiness resources to teens in Crown Heights, Brownsville, and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods of Brooklyn in making the program a success. Teen Crew offers a wide variety of humanities-based educational and professional career building opportunities for young adults. In grades 9 and 10 of the program, teens apprentice with departments at the Museum including early childhood education, science, animal care, arts and culture, after school, and select administrative departments; in grades 11 and 12, eligible participants are offered a paid internship with one of those departments. This program is an opportunity to develop the next generation of museum professionals.

Associated Products

Change Begins With You-th (Exhibition)
Title: Change Begins With You-th
Curator: Brooklyn Children Museum’s Rapid Response Collecting Task Force
Abstract: Change Begins With You(th) exhibit was a reinterpretation of the Museum’s 30,000 object collection through the lens of BCM’s Rapid Response Collecting Task Force (RRCTF), a group of high school students who intern in the collection department at the Museum. The RRCTF engaged in “rapid-response collecting,” a method of gathering artifacts in response to current events, with a focus on exploring the experiences and people of BCM’s Central Brooklyn community. The exhibition featured items that directly responded to major moments of 2017-18 and revolve around themes of gentrification, criminal justice, gender equity, and racism. Objects acquired included posters from the New York City “March for Our Lives” protest in March 2018; the suit Councilman Jumaane Williams was wearing when he was arrested while protesting the deportation of immigration lawyer Ravi Ragbir; and a clear tote bag belonging to playwright, poet, and prison activist Liza Jessie Peterson, which she carried into Rikers Island prison daily while teaching poetry to youth inmates.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://www.brooklynkids.org/exhibits/change-begins-with-youth/#:~:text=Change%20Begins%20With%20You(th)%20exhibit%20was%20a%20reinterpretation%20of,collection%20department%20at%20the%20Museum.
Primary URL Description: Exhibit website
Secondary URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T7fXj9qoyBhNTiX7lwUz7oBgmrxAOmKu/view?usp=sharing
Secondary URL Description: Photos of exhibit and the RRCTF at work

The Power of Print (Exhibition)
Title: The Power of Print
Curator: Brooklyn Children's Museum's Teen Arts and Advocacy Council
Abstract: The Power of Print is a compilation of screen prints depicting social justice issues inspired by historical artifacts found in Brooklyn Children's Museum's collection. Over the course of the spring semester, teens researched and worked with objects in BCM's collection that related to a social justice topic of their choosing. While developing research and object handling skills, teens also learned about how the art medium of screenprinting is used to visually share important information with a larger audience than a singular painting or sculpture is able to do. Teens considered the visual impact of their posters through form, color, content, and composition.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17jevoVkD7CLLFcgAvK9UWR9BjyCf8c6P/view?usp=sharing
Primary URL Description: Photos of exhibit

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