As an organization, our origin starts in The Port Neighborhood in Cambridge, MA. The neighborhood has played a key role in the City’s manufacturing and immigrant history, a place where generations of families of diverse backgrounds have grown up. A youth center, social service organizations, churches, schools, and a children’s arts center strengthen the fabric of the neighborhood. With mostly low buildings and dense residential streets in a third of a square mile, the Port is flanked by MIT and hundreds of biotech and high tech companies in Kendall and Central Squares, their workers looking for nearby housing and their tall glass and steel buildings standing in stark contrast to the Port, where three housing developments are home to many families living below the poverty line. Corner stores and small restaurants have been closing. Unsolved murders of young adults continue to raise concern. A neighborhood under stress, the Port is at a critical moment in its evolution.

The disparity between the highest growth area of Cambridge (site of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Novartis, Pfizer, Amazon, and the Koch Institute) and the community in need next door presents an unjust urban picture. What used to be an area of lowest rents is feeling pressure that threatens the social and economic character of its community, which feels unseen and unheard. Of 7,000 Port residents (approximately 50% people of color) almost 1,000 are young adults ages 18-25. Too many of these individuals who have grown up in the shadow of “Little Silicon Valley” are unemployed or underemployed, with associated street involvement, risks, and loss of hope. Once they reach 18 and no longer can participate in the programs for children, they do not have an arts-based space in the Port that taps into their talent, develops workforce skills, and acknowledges the context of their lives.

Desperate to create more positive change for young adults in the neighborhood in 2017, Christopher Hope and Moise Michel, used the design method to ask Port neighborhood young adults of color what kinds of opportunities they wanted to see available. Two answers consistently came up in those early conversations: creativity, and economic opportunities. Artplace America, the creative placemaking movement, and local Cambridge foundations empowered Hope and others to create a local media studio for young adults in the Port neighborhood. Now, with several academic, foundation, municipal, and corporate partnerships, the Loop Lab is a major connector for young adults of color in greater Boston to higher education (Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology), the creative workforce (paid internships), and entrepreneurship opportunities.

Our service population has since expanded to include students who are from other parts of Greater Boston, including Dorchester, Roxbury, East Boston, and Quincy.