Saturday Cafe members testing projection mapping concepts in preparation for a project. 

Saturday Cafe is a no-cost experimental advanced-track youth media education project that provides students with challenging and engaging professional development and learning opportunities. Collaborative in nature, this student-led educational experience is co-created with the program’s primary mentors. Together they talk, work, create and experiment with technology and find new strategies to engage their surrounding communities with media art. Saturday Cafe is a keystone in our educational ecosystem, allowing young makers from multiple communities to collaborate in an equity-driven space of collaboration and community engagement.

Members are encouraged to be vocal, present, and willing to experiment with ideas and share them in respectful and generative ways. 

For questions about Saturday Cafe, please contact Caroline Doherty at caroline@squeaky.org


The 2023-2024 Saturday Cafe program is full. Check back in spring 2024 for info about applying for the 2024-2025 school year!

Are you a high school student who is passionate about film and/or media art? Do you love making things, and experimenting with new ideas, new software, and new equipment? Do you already have some experience with media art? (Including but not limited to video, animation, digital illustration, sound editing, creative coding, game design, digital photography, etc etc!) Do you want to spend your Saturday afternoons working on exciting new projects, meeting other teen artists, and working with amazing guest artists and mentors? Then Saturday Cafe might be the place for you!

Spring 2023 dates:

Feb 10 – May 18

Saturdays 1:30-4:30 pm

Daily bus passes available

FREE to participate

Stipends for completing the program!

Field Trips!

Final screening at the Burchfield Penney Art Center!

In addition to working on a range of smaller media art projects and building new skills, this year’s Saturday Cafe participants will work on a longer term project called Stepping Into Your Light. For this project, students from both Saturday Cafe and Just Buffalo Literary Center will work in response to the work of Buffalo-based artist Julia Bottoms, whose work is on view at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Bottoms uses portraiture to express the nuance and complexities of Black identity beyond limiting, reductive stereotypes. She has also been selected to fabricate a sculpture of Shirley Chisholm. As the first Black woman to be elected to Congress in 1968, and the first Black woman to run for President of the United States, Chisholm’s life and legacy are rooted in carving a place for her voice to be heard and to advocate for her community.

Through sessions at the Burchfield Penney and at Squeaky Wheel, students will be inspired to imagine what it means to dream beyond imposed societal limitations, and to define how they see themselves in history on their own terms. Through creative writing and multimedia video, students are encouraged to consider how they find their voice, to think through how the visual arts can be a catalyst for more expansive and meaningful representation.

 

Apply online at this link.

Questions? Email caroline@squeaky.org

 

 

 

Past Exhibitions

SIMULATION: A virtual exhibition Image: Raymarri Hugh, SIMULATION (2020)
RUIN’D  an Exhibition of Systems of Failure- July 12 – August 10, 2019

 


Saturday Cafe is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts. Squeaky Wheel’s Youth Arts Education Programming is also supported in part by grants and awards from the Cameron & Jane Baird Foundation, Children’s Foundation of Erie County, City of Buffalo Cultural Funding, Regional Economic Development Council, and The Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, as well as venue and exhibition support by Burchfield Penney Art Center.  We thank all our sponsors for their generosity.