Four programs run by the founding team. Each one fed directly into the Lab's curriculum and operating model.
In partnership with Prócora, a workshop for emerging entrepreneurs in Mexico City covering business fundamentals, the entrepreneur's journey, and go-to-market strategy.
18 participants enrolled. All 18 completed the program. Each left with a developed business plan. The cohort spanned a range of industries — music, visual art, fashion, digital services — confirming that the Lab's framework works for creative practitioners and traditional entrepreneurs across sectors.
The 100% completion rate was not accidental. It came from the same structure the Lab uses today: a three-day intensive that builds commitment, followed by weeks of structured implementation with real accountability. Participants who start with that foundation finish.
Mexico City is where the Lab's core hypothesis was tested at scale: business fundamentals, taught well, work for artists. The curriculum that came out of it is the backbone of the City Arts Lab program.
Warner Bros. Discovery × Acme Innovation. A startup accelerator on the Warner Bros. Discovery lot in Burbank. 13 companies selected from hundreds of applicants, spanning media platforms, software, and digital marketplaces.
The program delivered executive-level education, investor access, and partnership opportunities with WBD around emerging technologies. Founders moved through a structured curriculum with direct access to WBD leadership and industry experts.
The experience drove the Lab's emphasis on practical startup skills over abstract mentorship. What worked in Burbank — a compressed curriculum with real stakes, real partners, and a public-facing outcome — is what the Lab delivers in cities.
The corporate partnership model that made Collider possible is the same model the Lab uses for Founding Sponsors: companies that want to reach a creative audience integrate their tools into the program and gain presence at every stage of the participant journey.
A practicum at Berklee College of Music where students build their own arts-based products and services on the Raidar platform. Students move from concept to deployed product — building real business models, engaging real users, and learning the founder mindset through direct experience rather than case studies.
Raidar is the academic foundation of the Lab's curriculum. The same progression — business model, revenue plan, deployed product — that students work through at Berklee is what Lab participants work through in cities.
The practicum proved something that now shapes how the Lab teaches: artists learn fastest by building, not by listening. The three-day intensive is dense with instruction, but the following eight weeks are where the work actually happens. Participants ship. The curriculum is designed around that reality.
New Orleans, Louisiana. 2011–2014. A $275,000 ArtPlace America grant to St. Claude Main Street in New Orleans' 8th and 9th Wards. The project organized local arts organizations, developed programming that connected the arts community with surrounding residents, and activated small businesses along the commercial corridor.
An Arts Advisory board, community working groups, and tactical urbanism methods kept the work responsive to the neighborhood. The program demonstrated that arts-driven development works when artists and residents are the designers, not the subjects.
St. Claude is where the Lab's approach to city partnerships was shaped. The program worked because the city liaison was genuine — not a bureaucratic checkbox, but a real relationship with the community the program was trying to reach. That's what the Lab asks of its city partners today.
The infrastructure model that came out of it — local organizations, alumni networks, a toolkit that outlasts the grant — is the same model the Lab builds in every city it enters.