As we kick off summer 2023, we’d like to share Beam Center’s summer initiative: Beam Camp City Wide! Beam Camp City Wide brings our ethos of collaboration, creation and belonging to 21 sites and 1500+ young people across New York City and beyond! In addition to Beam's Governors Island, Red Hook and New Hampshire locations, we are designing, building and making with students in grades 3-12, artists and educators in 18 New York City Public schools. Our new partnership with NYCPS's Division of Multilingual Learners includes a Teen Apprenticeship and the Connected Worlds program in which 800+ younger Spanish-speaking Newcomers explore adaptability to new places through hands-on STEAM projects.

We’re looking forward to inspiring connections this summer for youth across the city this year. Read below about our programs and projects to learn more about what this summer will look like.

Connected Worlds

Connected Worlds is a summer program that incorporates hands-on STEM projects, creative writing, design thinking and problem solving as a vehicle for personal expression and community building. Connected Worlds will serve approximately 800 English language learners from grades 3-8. Starting on July 5th, the programming will be taking place in 11 schools and will end on August 18th. Connected worlds is a series of collaborative projects based on the theme of adaptation. It is separated into two groups of projects: Fantastic Ecology and Futurescapes.

Futurescapes

Fantastic Ecology

The Futurescapes group will work with youth from grades 6 to 8 and similar to Fantastic Ecology, they will also build a model biome with geographic features, climate and natural resources. Afterwards they will create a civilization that adapts a landscape to the needs of its inhabitants and then design technology for exploring new worlds.

The Fantastic Ecology groups are projects designed for youth from grades 3 to 5, where they will create a model biome with geographic features, climate and natural resources. Afterwards, they will invent animals with hybrid biological adaptations suited to the environment and then kids will connect their biomes that they will create as a group, exchange animals and evolve them to the new environments.

DML Apprenticeship

NYCDOE's Division of Multilingual Learners (DML) and the Beam Center have partnered to launch the DML Apprenticeship program that offers immigrant and multilingual students the opportunity to participate in a fully in-person program where they engage with and design a series of STEM related hands-on projects.

Apprentices are introduced to the fundamentals of designing, learning, and building STEM projects through 3-stations. As they build personal and collaborative projects over the course of 10 weeks, apprentices will develop leadership and job readiness skills. Apprentices will be building 4 different projects like Pocket Plants, LED Flowers, Candles and Flower Pounding. Follow us on our social media and subscribe to our newsletter to follow along the Apprentices journey during this summer.

Career Connect - Design for Play

This summer, in collaboration with New York City Public Schools (NYCPS), Beam staff members have designed projects for students that will participate in NYCPS’s Career Connect Program. Through the Career Connect Program, students are given the opportunity to participate in a program that connects them to a real-world career path.

Inspired by our Governors Island Big Project, seeAsaw (a public art and a structure for play), students participating in the Career Connect program will imagine their own original play structures and environments and then prototype them. Early on, they’ll virtually meet seeAsaw’s designers, London-based Andre Kong Studio, to learn firsthand about this real-life design process from early inspiration to final large-scale public installation. Then they’ll apply that to their own process as they imagine, play, refine, build and document. Finally, they will come full circle when they spend a week on Governors Island, where they’ll present their working models to Andre Kong Studio’s design team in person, get feedback and celebrate their work, and take part in directly fabricating and installing seeAsaw on Governors Island.

Younger Youth - Ancestral Futures

Ancestral Futures is part of Summer Youth Employment - Younger Youth project based learning program funded by the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD). Youth ages 14-18 will participate in the program and research, learn, and share their individual ancestral and cultural influences. This year’s theme is Lewks - an exploration into the then, now, and future of fashion, textiles, and assistive tech. Participants will be working in groups and will have the chance to showcase their individual personalities through their final product. Stay tuned and check back here end-of-summer to learn about what they create.

Externships

Youth at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory - Summer 2022

In addition to our in-house youth employment enterprises - such as Project Leaders, Project Production, and others - Beam is proud to manage a robust externship enterprise. Through our externships, Beam places young people in paid jobs and internships with other community-based organizations and businesses across NYC. Experiences range from office work to research to more physical pursuits.

Beam Camp City

Beam Camp City provides free summer programming to groups from our partner public schools and community based organizations. Guided by NYC high schoolers and young adults from Beam Center’s Youth Employment programs, campers collaborate to build one of Beam’s Big Projects and experience all of the best aspects of the summer camp experience. Collaboratively youth and adult staff who form a part of the Beam Camp City community jointly create an immersive experience that centers on the GI big project, seeAsaw, and the BCC summer theme “Repurposing Leads Way to Play!”

Beam Camp City Wide

Carlos Baez

Serena Seshadri