GlassRoots joins the Newark Youth Workforce Collaborative

The Newark Youth Workforce Collaborative just gained a new member. GlassRoots, a glass art education space, hopes to further its college and career readiness services to help young people see art as a potential pathway to success. Newark Opportunity Youth Network (NOYN) is the backbone of the Collaborative, a collective approach to creating a school-to-workforce pipeline. And as the backbone of the Collaborative, NOYN works to support its partner programs with data, strategy and fundraising.

“The pathways to post-secondary success for young people are as varied and unique as the young people themselves,” said Robert Clark, CEO of NOYN. “We are excited to have GlassRoots join the Collaborative and help us continue to build out a robust school-to-workforce pipeline in Newark.”

Glassroots has been educating Newark students for 20 years, teaching glassmaking to students  “ages 10  to 110,” said Carol Losos, Executive Director of GlassRoots. The bulk of its services include school field trips, after-school programs and residencies in local schools, exposing students to the dangerous but exhilarating magic of glass. 

“There’s something really appealing about glass. It’s dangerous. It involves fire, but it also involves an amazing transformation - you go from a solid to molten liquid to solid again in a new form. And it’s almost magical,” Losos said.

Through learning the craft of glassmaking, students learn skills like teamwork, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and so much more. They’re trusted with dangerous materials and working with extreme heats, but GlassRoots says, “Yes, you can do this. Yes, people are afraid of it. But you’re going to conquer it.”

Traditionally, glassmaking is an expensive and exclusively white space that has long been inaccessible to communities of color. But GlassRoots is trying to change that narrative by connecting students of color with the art form, and providing them access to learn and flex their creative skills. 

Through partnerships with the Penland School of Craft located in North Carolina, and Peters Valley School of Craft in rural New Jersey, GlassRoots students can expand their art education by attending a 12-week fellowship, learning from professional artisans and getting a behind-the-scenes look at the art world.  At the end of the fellowship, students exhibit their artwork and leave with a sense of what it’s like to make a living through art. 

Josh Toler, an Uplift Academy alum, attended the fellowship at Penland in 2018 and worked with Peters Valley the following year, and described his experience as “life-changing.” At Penland, he learned blacksmithing, metal work and fabrication under sculpture artist Andrew Hayes, and at Peters Valley, he experienced the business side of art through working in the gallery, setting up art fairs, helping with the website and all the backbone work that keeps art alive. 

“This opportunity allows you access to a medium where you can express yourself in new ways you never thought of before,” Toler said. “The forms of art are limitless, and for me, this experience raised the ceiling for what I thought I would be able to accomplish. It was fun, light-hearted, enjoyable and engaging. It was just beautiful.”

As GlassRoots continues to evolve, Program Director Lisa Duggan said they are listening to the community and building onramps to career and college success. GlassRoots has seen many talented students who could only see art as a hobby, rather than a career. So as the organization looks to the future, Duggan said they aspire to blend glassmaking and crafts work with college and career readiness to give young people more opportunities to fulfilling careers. 

“When you work in a community for a long time, you need to be responsive to the needs of that community. And we know that students need pathways to meaningful work that give them a great living and a great life,” she said. 

Through joining the Newark Youth Workforce Collaborative, GlassRoots is excited to plug into a local consortium of community organizations who are already leading the way on youth workforce development. 

“And honestly, I thought we could learn from you all too,” Losos said. 

In 2022, GlassRoots plans to open a newer, larger facility in the heart of downtown Newark, with an ultimate goal of making glass approachable and accessible in every ward. Glass is transformative and it can be a transformative experience, Losos said, and with the support of the community, she sees glass as a vehicle for personal and professional development.

“GlassRoots’ goal and mission is to open up the ways that students think about what they’re capable of and what’s possible for them. Up until now, we’ve been a model of what’s possible, but we want to take that next step and give young people real training in the pathway to becoming artists,” Duggan said.