NYC Cultural Affairs

Culture Making 2024

Thank you, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (“DCLA”), for investing in Thrive Collective’s mission to eradicate artless education since 2016. From July 2023 to September 2024, our New York City students and artists completed: 152 school and community murals totaling 40,000 square feet of public art at seventy-six locations in all five boroughs. Ten original…

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HeART Beat Festival 2024

Video produced by Tony Horn / BRIC Arts Media for NYC Council  The 7th Annual HeART Beat Festival returned to Roy Wilkins Park in Queens on May 29, 2024. Middle school students painted murals, designed video games, experienced virtual reality, break danced, freestyle rapped, competed at drama games and so much more. Thrive Collective collaborated…

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Bronx Museum x Thrive Collective 2024

Video produced by Tony Horn / BRIC Arts Media for NYC Council  As the Art a Catalyst for Change provider at three schools in The Bronx and Manhattan, it was our pleasure to collaborate with the Bronx Museum in producing the 6th Annual Art a Catalyst for Change final event at the Bronx Museum on…

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Volunteer for HeART Beat Queens 2024

Students from six Queens middle schools will converge at Roy Wilkins Park for the 2024 Queens HeART Beat Festival on May 29 from 10am – 1pm. Join us to provide an interactive, arts-based field day experience celebrating the completion of the Art a Catalyst for Change anti-gun violence initiative. Sponsored by the NYC Council, in…

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Culture Making 2023

Thank you, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, for investing in Thrive Collective’s mission to eradicate artless education since 2016. In FY23, our students and artists completed: 156 school and community murals at seventy-four locations in all five boroughs; 28 original songs and 27 music videos; Our 450th mural since 2013; Our 25,000th student and 200th…

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RHYME x Queens Prep: “Into Your Mind”

R.H.Y.M.E. collaborates with students from Queens Prep High School to learn about hip-hop as a therapeutic outlet and be able to get hands on experience at songwriting, producing and audio recording. This eclectic record came from a series of writing exercises and production workshop in which students wrote, performed and co-produced the music by working…

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Thrive’s RHYME Director Collaborates with Ice-T at Songwriting Workshop

Ice-T was impressed. He had never witnessed anything quite like Randy Mason and his cajón. The legendary rapper, actor, and producer was a guest speaker and facilitator at an Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) songwriting workshop for teens hosted by Microsoft and The Universal Hip-Hop Museum at the Microsoft Garage in New York City on August 10.…

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RHYME x PS 34: “Kindness so Electric”

“Kindness So Electric” is a collaboration between PS 34 and Thrive Collective’s RHYME program. This song is about students going for their passions and converting negative thoughts to positive ones through the arts, unity and sports. Over the course of 20 weeks, students and Teaching Artists worked together to learn about hip hop, produce an…

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Students Dance, Paint and Rap at HeART Beat 2023

The Annual Queens Art a Catalyst for Change Culminating Event—the HeART Beat Festival—returns for the sixth time. The 6th annual Heartbeat Festival was held on May 25th, 2023 at Black Spectrum Theater in Roy Wilkins Park, Queens, NYC. The Festival is produced by Thrive Collective in partnership with The Museum of The Moving Image and…

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Thrive Mural Lights Up New York Liberty Game at Barclays Center

An interactive mural experience hosted by Thrive Collective helped basketball fans celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month when the New York Liberty played the Connecticut Sun on Saturday, May 27 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. “Light It Up,” a mural painted on the main concourse during the team’s second annual AAPI…

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