Content Creators

• One-week intensive

Some of the most important journalism never ran in a newspaper. It got made by teenagers with cameras and microphones in neighborhoods where nobody else was paying attention. That's the tradition this class is built on.

Carlos McBride has spent years teaching young people how to document their communities — producing work that aired on public radio, told stories about homelessness, immigration, and identity, and gave voice to people who usually don't get one. He brings that same framework here: journalism as a social act, not just a craft.

You'll learn how to conduct a real interview, how to shoot footage that carries meaning, how to cut it together so it earns attention. More importantly, you'll learn how to find the story underneath the story — the one worth telling — and how to do it with the care it deserves.

By Friday, you have a finished short documentary. If you want, it premieres live at The Drop, Creators Campus's Thursday evening showcase, and goes online. That choice is yours — especially if the subject is personal.

You leave with

A finished short documentary — shared on your terms.

Signature

• Journalism as a social act — find the story underneath the story

Led by

Carlos REC McBride →

A first look at the DSLR — what it is, how it sees, and how to make an image that feels intentional. This class stays in-camera the whole time: no editing, no printing, no post-production. Just the relationship between you, the lens, and the light in front of you.

In-camera only. No editing, no printing.

You leave with

Command of a DSLR and a set of intentional, in-camera photographs.

Signature

• Beginner-friendly — no gear or experience needed

Led by

Julia Ro →

• Previous photography experience required

You already know how to take a picture. Now learn how to make one.

This class is about seeing light intentionally — understanding how to control, shape, and direct it so your images look the way you envisioned them, not just what the camera happened to capture. Working with strobes, continuous lights, TTL flash units, light wands, reflectors, and modifiers, students learn to build a shot from the ground up: purpose first, then execution.

Every image is made in-camera. No editing, no printing — what comes out of the lens is the finished piece.

You leave with

The ability to shape and direct light to realize a shot you previsualized.

Signature

• A full lighting kit — strobes, continuous light, TTL flash, modifiers

Led by

Julia Ro →

• Come ready to get messy

Your digital photos become something you can hold. Students submit a handful of images ahead of time; Julia pre-makes the negatives. From there, we use alternative photographic processes — cyanotype and anthotype — to create vibrant, one-of-a-kind handmade prints. No two come out the same.

Bring your imagination and wear clothes you're okay getting messy.

You leave with

One-of-a-kind handmade prints made from your own photographs.

Signature

• Alternative processes — cyanotype & anthotype

Led by

Julia Ro →

• One-week intensive

Long before spray cans, people used walls to say what mattered — from ancient markings in Egypt and Rome to the coded tags of 1970s New York. In this one-week intensive, Studio Arts students step into that lineage as practitioners: the subway writers who turned a transit system into a moving gallery, the hip-hop generation who made stylized lettering a visual language, and artists like Basquiat, Haring, Lady Pink, and Banksy who carried it from the street into the world's great institutions.

Then students go outside. Day trips through Holyoke put them face-to-face with the murals that define the city — reading a wall the way you'd read a poem, asking what it says and who it speaks for. Back in the studio, they build real skills: color theory, scale, stenciling, lettering, and the composition that makes a large-scale work land from a hundred feet away.

From day one, students are making. Original pieces develop across the week and come to scale, then go public at Beyond Armour Yard alongside installations by Beyond Walls — a real venue, a real audience, real stakes. Along the way, students interview visiting graffiti artists for a video podcast they shoot and edit themselves. By the end, they don't just understand graffiti's history — they've added to it.

You leave with

A large-scale original mural shown publicly at Beyond Armour Yard — plus a video podcast episode you shot and edited with working artists.

Signature

• A public mural exhibition at Beyond Armour Yard, with Beyond Walls
• Interviews with working graffiti artists → a student-made video podcast

Led by

Carlos REC McBride →