The Imagine Project has been serving low-income schools and NYC homeless shelters that are for the most part totally lacking in arts and culture programming.  Our creativity workshops introduce and instill in our students an insight and understanding of their own, more often than not, undiscovered and unique potential. 

The objective of the initial sessions is above all, to gain the trust of our children.  The second part of the early workshop sessions is to introduce the students to the idea of improvisational performance.  Each year the Imagine Project serves approximately 1,300 children between the ages of four and eighteen.

MISSION

The Imagine Project is a not for profit 501(c) 3 corporation, dedicated to nurturing a child¹s creativity through the arts and was founded in 1992 on the principle that there exists within each child a creative energy which must not lie dormant. Rather, this creativity must be channeled to radiate light. For energy misdirected can lead to things far more destructive than darkness. We must create and facilitate a safe environment for children to explore and engage these creative forces. We must encourage and enable them toward the realization of these vast talents and creative abilities. We must help to nurture, develop and when necessary recapture those innate gifts of childhood which so often are lost by the age of ten as children begin to ask: "What if they laugh at me? What if I make a mistake?"


We believe above all else that art has the power to save lives. We have seen this time and again since our inception in 1992. We have nurtured inner city children who barely speak; to sing, children who hardly move; to dance, children who never thought it possible, to turn their own ideas into staged works of art with music created by the children themselves. For many children The Imagine Project may be the only place they may ever have to discover that all accomplishments start with a dream, and that all dreams are possible.

HOW VARIETY HELPS

Variety the Children’s Charity of New York’s grant to the Imagine Project funds workshops delivered to at-risk youth in New York City homeless shelters.  These workshops instill a sense of true value and worth in young people, and an understanding of their ability to contribute to the betterment of not only the community but also the world in general.    The workshops run weekly for six months in 18 New York City homeless shelters.