Why We Started Whistling Finch Labs
While hosting a hands-on fashion pop-up program in the Bronx, a seventh-grade girl looked up from the mannequin she was working on and said something I've never forgotten: "I have nothing like this. This is made for me."
I've thought about that sentence more times than I can count. Not because it was about fashion — it wasn't, really. It was about every kid having a chance to make things that they want to make, to learn skills and manipulate tools and materials, to reflect their creativity, with mentors to inspire them.
Where the idea actually started
That moment was the confirmation. The idea itself started earlier, during COVID, while I was home reflecting on a career I'd spent building exactly this kind of experience for families — just not yet for tweens.
For more than ten years, I designed cultural STEAM exhibits and programs at the Children's Museum of Manhattan. What I learned there shaped everything that came after: you can transport a family into an entirely new world with the right exhibit, and then bring in genuinely talented mentors from across the city to inspire them and teach them something real. That combination — immersive space plus real mentor plus hands-on making — is powerful. I watched it work, over and over.
At the same time, while earning my master's in museum studies at Harvard, I was also working as a middle school health teacher. And I kept noticing the gap between the two worlds I was living in. So few of my students had access to anything like what we were building at the museum — a space designed to provide inspiration and tools while sparking curiosity, staffed by people who could teach them something they couldn't learn anywhere else.
So during that COVID reflection period, I asked myself a simple question: why can't we build spaces like this specifically for adolescents and tweens?
Why a network, not a museum
The bigger idea came next, and it's the one that still shapes everything we do. Instead of building one museum — one building, one destination — what if we built a network of smaller spaces? Places tweens could access on their own, close to home, where local mentors could teach real classes. Empty storefronts turned into inspiring cultural spaces with makerspace tools and materials. And critically: a network, so the spaces were linked to each other even while each one stayed unique to its own community — one shared infrastructure for funding and administration, but many distinct local expressions of it.
I think about it like a soccer club model: a local team, coached by local mentors, that still travels to play — and connect with — other towns. Or maybe closer: Starbucks for the "one in every neighborhood, recognizable, welcoming" part, crossed with CrossFit or a soccer club for the "your own mentors, your own classes, your own community" part. Familiar enough to walk into without hesitation. Distinct enough to actually belong to.
And deliberately not sequestered. These spaces needed to welcome tweens, teens, and adults — so our youth aren't set apart from the community, but woven directly into it, learning alongside the adults around them.
Why these four skills, specifically
From the beginning, I didn't want this to be filed away as "the arts." I wanted it built around four things that are genuinely universal:
fashion - what we wear
cooking - what we eat
music - our universal language
building - what we use every day
These aren't decorative skills. They're the foundation underneath entire creative careers — architecture, marketing, design, engineering, even math and language — and every tween is already living inside all four of them, whether or not anyone's ever handed them a tool to go further.
The research backs up why this matters as much as it does. Hands-on creativity in cultural spaces has been shown to reduce anxiety and stress — exactly what so many young people are carrying right now. And with a loneliness epidemic affecting adults and adolescents alike, a genuinely welcoming third space does double duty: it pulls in tweens and adults, building the social support systems and community connections that isolation quietly erodes.
Four values have anchored this from day one: Create — space for hands-on making. Connect — space to meet new friends, neighbors, and mentors across every age. Respect — space to feel like yourself, and to honor others doing the same. Empower — the drive to build real skill, socially, physically, professionally, and emotionally.
The first pilot
I pitched the idea to the former head of my middle school, who happened to know the head of the Riverdale School in the Bronx. Within a few months, we had a space: Riverdale offered their black box theater. I brought in sewing teachers and mentors from New York's fashion world. And when Riverdale's head made a few calls, we ended up with donated fabric and mannequins from Ralph Lauren and Theory showing up at our door. We were floored.
But the best part wasn't the materials — it was the reach. Riverdale heard that our real dream was building cross-community connection, and partnered with a couple of South Bronx public schools. For one week, private and public school seventh graders designed, sewed, and showcased their own original styles, together. They wrote their own brands. They put on their own fashion show, with photos from a real fashion photographer.
It's one of my favorite weeks of my life. A public school teacher pulled me aside and said, "I've been dreaming of a place like this for my community — there's a derelict building that would be perfect." And that seventh grader looked up and told me exactly what I opened with: I have nothing like this. This is made for me.
The detail I keep coming back to: I never saw a phone out that week, unless a student was looking up a technique or a style reference. Every one of them was entirely focused on making something that reflected who they actually were.
Where we are now
Since that first week, we've run programs with Prep for Prep students and at the Museum of Art and Design tied to their Taylor Swift exhibit. We’ve tested programs in the South Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and now in Dutchess County, north of the city. We've sold out programs and had to turn away requests for more. Every single one has confirmed what that first pilot showed us: give a tween real materials, real mentors, and a real reason to make something — and something in them shifts.
Our next chapter is opening our first permanent Lab so we can start building our network — a home base where thousands of tweens can walk in and start building the future they want, and any adult can walk in and help them do it. Every kid deserves to say what that seventh grader said, and mean it. That's the whole reason we're doing this.