Boomboxes at Dock Street School

Beam Center’s Project Leaders program provides after-school programming to students at the Dock Street School in Downtown Brooklyn. Project Leaders first started working at Dock Street in early 2022, and youth participants just finished building their very own polygon-shaped boomboxes. Similar to the program’s work with CAMBA after school sites, a cohort of Project Leaders at Beam designs projects for youth at Dock Street and facilitates them at the school. 

The boombox was originally developed years ago by Beam’s Project Designers as an in-school project. Project Leaders drew inspiration from the original design and built upon it, creating their own unique approach to boomboxes. 

While building a boombox, student participants learned skills like soldering, woodworking, assembling speakers, measurement, and more. They also learned how to use tools like a miter box, hand saw, soldering machine, and electrical circuitry to connect the speaker and the chipboards. 

After students assembled their boomboxes, they were able to connect them to their phones through Bluetooth and play music. Project Leaders also designed a buzzer to play a game called Lyrical Genius with the students using their boomboxes.