Youth Workshops & Other Kids Activities in The Bay Area

The Crucible has hosted several types of  youth workshops & kids activities with local schools and organizations.  Working in collaboration with local educational programs, these projects teach the skills necessary to create a specific project under the instruction of Crucible faculty.  Past collaborations include Girls Inc., Lick Wilmerding School, Athenian School, Marin Community Day School, KIPP Bridge Charter School and Cole Middle School. Workshops are project-based opportunities for students to participate in a group project or create individual projects. Workshops are designed primarily to facilitate team building opportunities as well as individual exploration of the arts.

If you are interested in having The Crucible host a workshop, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Some of our previous workshops include:

•    Twelve Cole Middle School students convened after school and visited The Crucible, twice a week for five weeks.  During these ten, two-hour visits, the students designed and fabricated a bench for their school campus. Artists gave welding, blacksmithing and woodworking demonstrations, followed by general and specific safety training.  Over the course of the ten sessions students had the opportunity to design a bench and then fabricate their design, using their newly learned techniques in blacksmithing, welding and woodworking.  The installation of the bench took place during the school’s graduation ceremony as a celebration of Cole School and the potential for dynamic collaboration between West Oakland organizations.

•    Another huge success for the youth program has been the completion of the vegetable cart for City Slicker Farm. Youth from the West Oakland community, with the guidance of John McCormack, a Crucible woodworking instructor, designed and built a mobile vegetable stand for the local West Oakland farm. Throughout the construction process the participating youth were involved in every step of the construction process, from drawing and layout to using their newly acquired woodworking and welding skills.

•    The Girls Inc. Eureka Program completed a workshop with The Crucible’s expert faculty to learn the industrial arts of welding, blacksmithing and oxy / acetylene torch cutting. The group of thirty girls created five beautiful metal platters, each platter exploring a different element of their motto: Strong, Bold and Smart. Four of the completed platters were then auctioned to support the Girls Inc. summer program during their annual fundraiser Women of Taste: Art for Epicure.

•    KIPP Bridge Charter School completed their annual six-week Girls Welding Workshop. This program engaged young women from West Oakland to collaborate with Crucible artists to learn about welding and then design their own welded sculpture project: animal totem poles.


•    The Crucible hosted a workshop with over 20 youth who worked alongside Crucible artists to fabricate the panels for a wheelchair accessible ramp at The Crucible. The workshop brought together project managers, youth educators, youth, community members, and artists who collaborated to design and construct the ramp’s railing and pictorial panels that incorporate the history of West Oakland, Oakland, and The Crucible. Under the guidance of Crucible artists, youth brought to fruition the decorative panels using the techniques of MIG welding, plasma cutting, and finishing techniques.

Wheelchair Accessible Ramp Video