On behalf of  The Loop Lab Team, we welcome you to our website! The Loop Lab was founded in 2017 as a project to decrease youth violence and drug abuse in disadvantaged communities by increasing job opportunities. We operate as a non-profit social enterprise specializing in digital storytelling and workforce development. Our team works together to achieve three possible outcomes for our students: Education, employment, and entrepreneurship.

Education - We believe that having access to affordable higher education is a significant career pathway when working with opportunity youth, which is why we have an official partnership with Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (BFIT). Through this partnership, our program counts as 11 college credits towards an Associate’s degree in AV Technology. Students are also able to take advantage of FREE dual enrollment at BFIT. We are continuously building relationships with other colleges in greater Boston to further access to future education for our alumni.

Employment - For many of our students, making the choice to go straight into the workforce from program is priority. In 2019 alone, we have paid out over 1700 hours in work to students above the living wage in Massachusetts. We do this while generating 30% of our gross income. Alumni of our program have since landed in roles in places that allows them to give back to Cambridge - places like the Moses Youth Center and Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School.

Entrepreneurship - Unique to our program is our focus to validate entrepreneurship as an outcome in modern workforce development. Training entrepreneurship is a necessity in freelancing or developing an effective media arts careers - over 75% of media arts professionals will work, or currently work as independent contractors! Our curriculum covers topics like financial literacy, project budgeting, client relationships, business development, maintaining cultural identity in the workplace, networking, and how to successfully develop and to pitch a project. Small businesses benefit from start up funds. As a trustee of Kiva, we can provide microfinancing loans to eligible alumni.

Our mission is to empower content creators of color to have careers in media arts through job training and paid internships

What We've Achieved

• Secured 2nd location in the heart of Kendall Square Cambridge, MA, (2021)

• Grant recipient of The Barr Foundation, Cambridge Arts, and the Cambridge Community Foundation, (2020)

• Selected into the Social Innovation Forum 2021 Cohort, (2020)

• Became an official sponsor site for AV apprenticeships through the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Workforce Developement, (2020)

• Successfully launched virtual youth education programming, increasing the number of students served per year from 10 to 50 total, (2020)

• Recipient of The Boston Foundation's Open Door grant, (2020)

• Recipient of $75k grant from the Clermont Foundation, (2019)

• Grant recipient of the National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellowship, supported by the Barr Foundation, (2019)

• The Loop Lab is working with The Boston Foundation (TBF) to video document the art projects of 2019 Live Arts grantees, (2019)

• Awarded contract to work with multimedia artist Elisa Hamilton and Cambridge Arts to create, “The Podcast Jukebox” a jukebox filled with community recordings for the Foundry building, (2019)

• Established official partnership with the AVIXA Foundation, the charitable arm of AVIXA, which is a professional standard in audio-visual integration, (2019)

• Produced a film series about the Port Neighborhood in Cambridge, MA in partnership with Amazon Audible, (2019)

• WBUR Boston becomes an internship site for trainees, and teaching partner, (2019)

• Reached an agreement with the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology to give our trainees free college credit for their audio/video training and free dual enrollment into college, (2018)

• Successfully launched our first cohort of workforce development program, (2018)

• Received an official resolution document supporting the Loop Lab from The City of Cambridge city council and city mayor, (2018)

• Presenter on youth interventions at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, (2018)

• Recepient of grant from Eastern Bank Charitable Giving Foundation, (2018)

• Presenter at the National Creative Placemaking Summit in Washington, D.C., (2018)

• Christopher Hope appointed to the Mayor’s Art Task Force, (2018)

• Established membership in the audio/video international trade association AVIXA (formerly known as InfoComm), (2018)

• Speaker at Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit in Charleston, WV (2018)

• Grant beneficiary of A Taste of Cambridge food festival (2018)

• Selected New England Art Fellow by the National Arts Strategies (2018)

• Awarded $30,000 FLOW grant by the City of Cambridge & Cambridge Arts Council (2018)

• Participant in SXSW 2018 (2018)

• Became a member of the Audio Engineering Society New England Chapter (AES), (2018)

• Partnership with Google Cambridge, (2018)

• Participant in the 56th Commission on Social Development at the United Nations HQ (2018)

• Expanded our reach internationally through official collaborations with NGOs with consultative status in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (2018)

• Publicly aligned our mission with My Brother's Keeper Alliance (MBK) and My Brother's Keeper Boston (MBKB) by accepting the MBK Challenge to support the student cradle-to-career pipeline, which are now integrated into the Obama Foundation (2018)

• Recipient of prestigious $250,000 ArtPlace America Placemaker grant - funded by a coalition of foundations and federal agencies including the Barr Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bush Foundation, the Obama White House, and others (2017)

• Received grant funding from Cambridge Community Foundation (2017)

• Created community partnerships with the Cambridge Arts Council, Cambridge Community Television, and Cambridge Office of Workforce Development (2017)

The Loop Lab is a 501(c)(3) organization. Our Tax ID# is 82-3829806.