Junior Center of Art and Science
Create and explore with us after school! Our classes are engaging hands-on fun for young artists, makers, and inventors aged 6-13. Classes are small, student-centered experiences where youth can build skills, experiment with a variety of media, and connect with their creative selves.
All classes take place at 558 Bellevue Ave. Oakland, CA.
Registration opens on Monday, 7/21 at 12:00 PM
Registration closes on Wednesday, 9/3 at 4:00 PM
We are so excited for another fantastic year of Summer Camp. This year we have been approached by the UC Berkeley Social Origins Lab to be a partner in their research.
About the Social Origins Lab (SOL)
The Social Origins Lab is a developmental psychology lab at UC Berkeley led by Professor Jan Engelmann. They study how children think, learn, and grow in comparison to our closest living relatives, chimpanzees! To answer these big questions, they bring research games to schools, camps, museums and programs, all across the bay area. You may have seen them at the Lawrence Hall of Science, the Oakland Zoo, or even at your school. The research games are designed to be fun, engaging, and age-appropriate for kids of many ages; younger students may be read stories and asked questions about the different characters, while older kids may be tasked with cooperative memory games alongside a friend. In our partnership, Berkeley SOL will be working with kids aged 6-12.
Why it’s important
We are excited by this project and partnership with SOL. By studying how we develop emotionally, socially, and cognitively, this research improves lives at every stage and helps shape smarter policies and better support systems for everyone. We are also dedicated to forging a continued partnership with SOL in a way that is intentional and helpful for our community. There will be workshops and presentations on their work with developmental psychology and chimpanzees. We will also make sure that findings on the research conducted this summer will be equitably accessible. If you have any thoughts on how you would like to see this partnership unfold, please feel free to contact us at contact@juniorcenter.org
Create and explore with us after school! Our classes are engaging hands-on fun for young artists, makers, and inventors aged 6-16. Classes are small, student-centered experiences where youth can build skills, experiment with a variety of media, and connect with their creative selves.
All classes take place at 558 Bellevue Ave. Oakland, CA.
Registration opens on Monday, 2/24 at 2:00 PM
Registration closes on Wednesday, 4/2 at 4:00 PM
For rising 1st-8th graders, the Junior Center of Art and Science Summer Camp (CAMP JCAS) offers full day, arts-integrated engagements for young artists, makers and thinkers. Our projects are led by professional artists and educators who inspire a safe, open, and creative environment where campers feel encouraged to take risks, explore, and try their hand at a wide variety of arts and science activities including carpentry, game design, comics and more!
All JCAS classes are made available to families on a sliding scale. Families choose the amount they are able to pay, considering the top end of our scale is how much it costs us to run the class. We encourage families to help support our efforts to make programs available to those in need.
If the sliding scale prices are still out of your family’s budget, we do offer scholarships. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Please give us 7 business days to process applications. All scholarship requests must be made before April 15th.
Don’t worry about camps filling up, we account for this and ensure every camp is available for scholarship students.
Parents! Did you know JCAS is a 501c3 nonprofit? We are dedicated to offering equitable access to arts and science education. You can now support our mission directly using our Pay It Forward Program.
When registering your student for a camp, you’ll have the opportunity to Pay It Forward and contribute to our Scholarship Fund. Your donation ensures that students from all backgrounds can experience the joy and enrichment of our classes and camps—at little to no cost to them.
Learn more about our pay it forward program.
We provide one-of-a-kind learning experiences for more than 1,500 students every year. Most of our students – more than 70% – get financial assistance from Junior Center to be able to attend our classes and camps. You can make a donation today to support all of our programs – camps, classes, free workshops, and a gallery space for emerging Bay Area artists – to ensure equitable access to arts &science education for all.
Create and explore with us after school! Our classes are engaging hands-on fun for young artists, makers, and inventors aged 6-13. Classes are small, student-centered experiences where youth can build skills, experiment with a variety of media, and connect with their creative selves.
All classes take place at 558 Bellevue Ave. Oakland, CA.
Registration opens on Thursday, 12/12 at 12:00 PM
Registration closes on Friday, 1/10 at 4:00 PM
Join us for STEAM Night 2024 at Franklin Elementary in Oakland, CA.
STEAM is an educational approach that combines Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. STEAM is an evolution of STEM education that adds the arts to the mix. It’s designed to help students develop critical thinking, creativity, and innovation skills.
Here at the Junior Center we harness the power of creativity and experiential learning to inspire big ideas and illuminate the everyday connections between art and science.
Join JCAS Teaching Artist Zachary Sweet as he works with ARISE High schoolers on bringing their Poster Art to life!
Poster Arts is a chance for students to build graphic design skills while imagining themselves working in their dream industry. Some students chose to make concert posters, while others made political posters.
JCAS is pleased to introduce a new Early Childhood Enrichment program in collaboration with The Center for Early Childhood Connections (CECC).
CECC provides relationship focused, culturally attuned, and collaborative educational, mental health and wellness supports starting from pregnancy through age eight, for young children and those who care for them.
All classes take place at 558 Bellevue Ave. Oakland, CA.
The Peace Arts class is designed to promote the resilience of young children ages 2 – 5 by building trust with their caregivers and engagement in positive, therapeutic and FUN arts experiences. The class is co-taught by two experienced staff: a Teaching Artist and an endorsed Early Childhood Mental Health Practitioner who lead the group in engaging projects that allow for healthy relationships building, self-expression, sensory integration and exploration of the amazing world around us. One infant sibling (Under 6mo) may participate for free with an older sibling and adult caregiver.
All JCAS classes are made available to families on a sliding scale. Families choose the amount they are able to pay, considering the top end of our scale is how much it costs us to run the class. We encourage families to help support our efforts to make programs available to those in need.
If the sliding scale prices are still out of your family’s budget, please email us at contact@eastbaycreativelab.org for financial aid. Applications will be reviewed and accepted on a rolling basis. Apply today!
JCAS is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to offering equitable access to arts and science education. We serve more than 1,500 students every year and most of our students – more than 70% – receive financial assistance.
You can now support our mission directly using our Pay It Forward Program. When registering your student for a class, you’ll have the opportunity to Pay It Forward and contribute to our Scholarship Fund. Your donation ensures that students from all backgrounds can experience the joy and enrichment of our classes and camps—at little to no cost to them.
JCAS enrollment is non-transferable. That said, we do understand that sometimes your family schedule changes! We offer a one-time enrollment transfer for your child to another week of class that has spaces available free of charge.
In the event you need to cancel your child’s enrollment, we offer the following refunds:
All purchases include a 10% non-refundable deposit to cover administrative costs.
From 12/2 – 12/28, you will receive a 90% refund.
From 12/29 – 1/14, you will receive a 40% refund.
From 1/15 on, we are not able to offer any refunds.
ACTIVE now offers self-cancelations! If you need to cancel your registration for any reason, log in to your ACTIVE account, locate the registration you wish to cancel, and select ‘cancel’.
JCAS is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to offering equitable access to arts and science education. We serve more than 1,500 students every year and most of our students – more than 70% – receive financial assistance.
You can now support our mission directly using our Pay It Forward Program. When registering your student for a class or camp, you’ll have the opportunity to Pay It Forward and contribute to our Scholarship Fund. Your donation ensures that students from all backgrounds can experience the joy and enrichment of our classes and camps—at little to no cost to them.
Your donation of either 100%, 50%, 25%, or 15% of the cost of tuition will go directly to our Scholarship Fund. This fund subsidizes tuition costs for low-income members of our community. We encourage families to help support our efforts to make programs available to those in need.
This portion of your purchase will be 100% tax deductible. You will be emailed a gift receipt to reflect the portion of your purchase that is a donation.
If you have any questions about this process, feel free to reach out to us at contact@eastbaycreativelab.org
Thank you for your continued support of our mission.
