Thrive Collective has proudly partnered with New York Edge as one of their arts education providers since 2018.

Founded in 1992, New York Edge (formerly Sports & Arts in Schools Foundation) is one of the largest providers of school-based afterschool and summer programs in New York City and the metropolitan region. They offer enrichment programs before or after the school day year-round, and serve nearly forty thousand K-12 students at more than a hundred sites. After a hiatus during the COVID pandemic, we resumed murals programming with them during the 2023-2024 school year.

Fun fact: before officially partnering with New York Edge in 2018, we had been embedding murals, media, and RHYME programs into many of their after-school programs beginning in 2016 when we both contracted Marissa Molina as a teaching artist at the same school. Our shared students that year produced the “I Am Arverne” and “Keep Calm, Move One” murals at PS/MS 42Q in the Rockaways, along with several videos and music performances. The above video captures the very first collaborations that year. Since then, we have shared students in no less than two dozen after school programs. Later, Marissa joined our full-time staff and today serves as our Murals Art Director.

New York Edge was and remains one of the multi-service, school based youth agencies that continues to inspire us everyday. We are grateful for their leadership, innovation, and continued collaboration.