Beacon Craft Workshop

Beacon Craft Workshop centers its studio time on children exploring materials together and designing and implementing projects. The shared studio space is stocked with real tools and an array of high-quality materials, and students learn how to use these tools, materials, and the space so they feel the studio is their own. Studio spaces are indoors or outdoors and are designed with the child in mind, with shelves and walls displaying beautiful objects to observe and use in projects in an aesthetic and orderly environment.

• Schedule: Classes are kept small

In 2011, Ilana co-founded the Brooklyn Craft Workshop, which transformed into Beacon Craft Workshop when she moved upstream. Ilana, the founder and teacher, received her Masters of Arts in Teaching at Brown University and taught third grade at an inquiry-based public school in New York City called PS146: the Brooklyn New School. She also works as a potter and took classes at Haystack Mountain and Penland Schools of Craft. The program’s mission emphasizes exploration, choice, and developing skills, incorporates sciences, history, and art into materials exploration experiences with an emphasis on social-emotional growth, and nurtures a spirit of collaboration among students, who work together, ask questions, solve problems, and find joy in the process of making things. Ilana is also involved in the community through her work at the BHA Preschool, a Jewish, garden-based program for young children at the local synagogue.

Last updated May 27, 2026.