{"id":252020,"date":"2026-07-25T20:51:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/252020\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T20:51:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:51:21","slug":"philadelphia-screen-printing-shop-prepares-teens-for-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/252020\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia screen-printing shop prepares teens for future"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Philadelphia teenagers are learning the centuries-old craft of hand screen printing at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, continuing a focus on arts education for young people that dates to the institution\u2019s founding in 1977.\n<\/p>\n

Marion \u201cKippy\u201d Bolton Stroud, a Philadelphian and philanthropist, started the organization with the mission and purpose of educating young workers and artists in an apprenticeship model, said Christina Roberts, director of education at the museum.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents could come here and learn about screen printing on fabric, and [then] those skills would translate, and youth could go on to work in the factories in Philadelphia,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\"ALiya Grace Davis Jones, a member of the summer cohort of The Fabric Workshop and Museum\u2019s high school apprenticeship program, prepares materials for hand screen printing on Thursday, July 23, 2026. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

Although the cultural and industrial sector has changed, youth education and professional development remains a core piece of the museum\u2019s work, Roberts said, and its high school apprenticeship program<\/a> is a key part of that legacy.\n<\/p>\n

The museum is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, and teen engagement coordinator Anthony Folks said the high school apprenticeship program exemplifies the organization\u2019s commitment to the \u201cdirect connection between making and looking.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe studio was kind of built off of the high school program and getting young artists into the print studio with master printers,\u201d said Folks, a multimedia teaching artist<\/a>. \u201cAnd so we\u2019re still doing it, and you know we\u2019re still here, we\u2019re still striving and the program is still doing what it was meant to do.\u201d
\n\"AAnthony Folks, left, teen engagement coordinator at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, demonstrates a screen printing exercise for participants in the museum\u2019s high school apprenticeship program on Thursday, July 23, 2026. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

In three yearly cohorts, groups of four or five Philadelphia teenagers receive a stipend to learn the art of hand screen printing on fabric.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt introduces them to museum spaces in a live studio, as well as gives them some professional development and teaches them a hard skill, which is screen printing,\u201d Folks said.\n<\/p>\n

The process requires teamwork and promotes creativity and professional development skills, Roberts said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very critical at this age for the students to come in and learn how to work together and how to collaborate and how to be in a professional setting,\u201d she said. \u201cThose are really valuable skills, and those are skills that transfer to any walk of life.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Printing as practice for life and work<\/p>\n

On a recent Thursday, one of two summer cohorts gathered in the studio at the museum, looking on as Folks explained how they would start to make prints of patterns that each student had designed.\n<\/p>\n

In hand screen printing, a design is photographically exposed onto a woven mesh screen to create a stencil. The artist then uses a squeegee to push ink through the stencil so that the image appears on fabric or paper placed beneath the screen.
\n\"\"Liya Grace Davis Jones, a member of the summer cohort of The Fabric Workshop and Museum\u2019s high school apprenticeship program, prepares materials for hand screen printing on Thursday, July 23, 2026. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Folks said students will often be \u201cshy\u201d and \u201ca little quiet\u201d when they first start the program. Over the subsequent three months, though, they gain confidence quickly, in part thanks to the tangible result of their artistic efforts, he said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be a little scary, and then, you know, they\u2019re basically helping run the place,\u201d he said with a laugh.\n<\/p>\n

By the end of the course, each student will create an 8-foot banner with a repeating design screen printed the length of the fabric.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1482,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-252020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-creativity-sparks-success","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}