Why Whistling Finch Labs is building third spaces where every young person can make, explore and belong
The creative economy is the future. The question is who gets to be part of it.
The creative economy is bigger than most people think. It includes the arts and the cultures that shape our communities: music, fashion, food, theater, design and craft. It also includes the many jobs built on creative thinking: the marketing executive who shapes how a brand speaks, the creative strategist who turns a problem into a campaign, the product designer, the architect, the chef developing a new menu. Some of these people create with their hands. Others create with ideas. Most do both.
What connects them is the ability to imagine something that doesn't exist yet and make it real. That ability is worth a great deal. Arts and cultural production alone added $1.17 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2023, and creative thinking runs through nearly every other industry, too.
But look closer at who gets in. Online, Goldman Sachs counts roughly 50 million people creating content, yet only about 4% earn a professional income. Across creative fields, the pattern is similar. Talent is everywhere. Access is not. The young people who break through usually had something others didn't: tools at home, materials to experiment with, a mentor who opened a door, and the time and space to try things and fail.
We need to make that access equitable, so every young person can create, participate, and engage.
Creativity is not a luxury
In his 2006 TED talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?", the late educator Sir Ken Robinson put it plainly: "My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."
He also warned about what happens to that creativity as children grow up. Young kids will try anything, he observed, and "if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." Somewhere along the way, many of us learn to stop risking it. In his words, "we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it."
Schools carry enormous demands, and teachers do remarkable work within them. But a classroom built around tests and schedules can't always give a young person what creativity needs most: time, materials, freedom to fail, and someone who does this for a living saying, "Keep going."
That's where third spaces come in
Home is the first place. School or work is the second. A third space is somewhere you choose to be, where you can show up as yourself, try something new and meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet. For a lot of young people, especially outside big cities, those places are disappearing or were never there.
Whistling Finch Labs is creating them. Our Labs are hands-on spaces where young people and adults develop real skills and feel empowered to take part in the creative economy. Here is what that means in practice for our Labs:
Skills. Young people learn to design, sew, restyle, and repair, starting with fashion labs and growing into food, building, and music labs.
Tools and materials. Machines, materials, tools, and space are ready and waiting, so cost and equipment never decide who gets to experiment.
Mentors from different fields. Working designers and makers from New York City and our own community teach techniques and share how they built their careers, with no pressure to pick one yet.
Community. Our Labs are places to exchange ideas, creative approaches, and new ways of creating and thinking, and to make new friends and neighbors across different backgrounds.
Every program has two prices, Standard and Access, because equity has to show up in the budget, not just the mission statement.
In one of our Bronx labs, a 7th-grader shared how her “clothing gives me a voice without having to say anything,” while her friend, in the midst of designing and making her own new clothing, looked up and laughed, saying, “I have nothing like this; this [type of program] was made for me.” During the same program, the students’ public school administrator admitted, “I’ve been dreaming of a space like this for my community; there is an old building that would be a perfect place.” And more recently, in a Pawling Threads Lab program in Dutchess County, a tween jumped up from her seat, having just learned how to use a sewing machine, and shouted, “I feel so overpowered!!” She meant ‘empowered,’ but her enthusiasm just burst out, so none of us had the heart to change her words; it was exciting.
We believe in the potential of creativity
We've already reached more than 400 participants through pop-ups in New York City and Pawling. This March, we're opening the Restyle Streetwear Lab in Dutchess County: four weeks of after-school clubs, classes, open studio time, weekends with NYC designers, and a school-recess week that ends with young designers walking their own creations down the runway on March 27.
It's a start. Our goal is a network of community Labs, run by local talent, where any young person can walk in, pick up a tool and discover what they're capable of.
The creative economy is coming either way, in studios, kitchens, agencies and boardrooms. Let's make sure every young person has a seat at the worktable.
Will you help us? Donate, become a sponsor, or share your skills as a mentor! Reach out to our founder, Lizzy @ lmartin@whistlingfinch.org