A youth arts nonprofit · San Diego County, California
We use glass art to connect young people to better futures. The glass is how we get their attention — belonging, confidence, and a trusted adult who stays are what they actually leave with. Our studio travels to them, and the road keeps going: from a first class to advanced work to a paid seat at the torch.
Founded by master glass artist James Stone · built to outlast any one of us
The program we are building — these are our design targets, not results yet. We would rather show you the plan than dress up a number.
( 01 ) Who we are
Mobile After School Arts uses glass art to connect young people from different cultural and economic backgrounds to better futures — bringing a working studio to them, staying long enough to be trusted, and keeping the road open from a first class to advanced work to a paid seat at the torch.
— our mission
Molten glass will hold a teenager's attention like almost nothing else. We use that honestly: it is the doorway, not the destination. What we are actually after is belonging, confidence, the habit of solving a hard problem with your hands, and a grown-up who is still there next week.
Art programs are the first thing cut and the last thing funded — and the students who would light up in a studio are usually the ones who can never get to one. So we flipped the model: the studio travels. Then we made sure it doesn't end when the trailer pulls away.
We go where the students are. Cost, transportation and zip code should never decide who gets to make art.
No pre-packaged projects. Students learn a thousand-year-old discipline with professional tools, alongside working artists who take them seriously.
A single class changes a day. A pathway changes a direction — so we build one, all the way through to paid work and a reference that means something.
Every residency ends in public art that stays — proof, in glass and light, of what these students can do.
( 02 ) What we do
We teach three glass disciplines — glassblowing at the hot shop, flameworking at the torch, and fusing in the kiln. Torchwork and fusing travel easily to any campus; blowing runs where we can set up properly for it.
flagship
Our core program: a full 40-week residency on one campus. Weekly hands-on sessions — studio safety, the behaviour of hot glass, heat and colour, design — with real bench time every week, building toward a collaborative public art piece.
The same instruction inside the school day, built with your district as a scheduled class. Reaches the students who cannot stay late — the ones with a job, a bus, or a younger sibling to collect.
Talk to us about scheduling →For students who have put in the hours: smaller crews, harder work, real commissions. This is where a hobby starts to look like a craft, and where the first stipends live.
See the pathway →Single-day live demonstrations and taster workshops for schools, districts and community events. The fastest way to see what molten glass does to a room full of teenagers.
Book a demo →Student-designed, student-built installations — planned with the school and unveiled to the whole community. Art that says we made this, for years.
Plan a project →( 03 ) The pathway
A one-off workshop is a nice afternoon. What actually changes a young person's direction is a door that stays open, and someone on the other side of it who knows their name. This is the road we are building — every stage of it deliberate, from the first day to the day they no longer need us.
Any student, ages 12–26
No experience, no audition, no cost. Safety first, then a torch. Most students have never made anything with fire before — that is the point.
Weekly, all school year
Students who keep coming back learn all three disciplines and start earning real bench time. This is where the teamwork and the trusted-adult part actually happens — not in a mission statement, in a room, every week, for forty weeks.
By invitation, after the hours are in
Smaller crews on harder work: commissions, public installations, real deadlines and a standard that does not bend. Being asked matters as much as the work does.
Stipends for advanced students & alumni
Assisting demos, filling commissions, helping run a session. A young person's first paycheque for skilled work changes how they see themselves — and it comes with the unglamorous parts too: showing up on time, being counted on.
Student mentors
Advanced students help the newest ones find their footing. The student who was terrified of the torch two years ago becomes the person who makes it look survivable. This is how a program stops depending on any one adult.
College & career support
A portfolio, a reference from someone who watched them work, help with applications and trade connections. Whether they go on to glass or to something else entirely, they leave with evidence of what they can do.
Sometimes a student stops coming because of a bus fare, an empty refrigerator, an unsafe house, or something they cannot say out loud yet. We are a glass program, not a social services agency — but we are paying attention, and we will help a family reach the people who do this for a living. Nobody gets quietly dropped for missing three weeks.
( 04 ) How a residency works
Your school signs on. We handle logistics, equipment, insurance and safety planning with your staff.
The mobile studio arrives after the last bell — torches, tools, glass, safety gear, and working artists.
Forty weeks of hands-on sessions. Every student learns the science, practices the craft, and gets real torch time.
The residency culminates in a collaborative public art piece, installed at the school and celebrated with the community.
( 05 ) Why it matters
After-school hours are the highest-risk hours of a young person's day. We fill them with a warm room, a hard task, and a crew that notices when you are missing.
Finishing a piece of glass you shaped with fire is a different kind of grade. It cannot be faked, it cannot be crammed for, and it does not expire.
Heat, viscosity, annealing, timing, colour chemistry — real material science, learned with your hands. And underneath it, the harder lesson: the piece cracked, so begin again.
Forty weeks with the same working artists is long enough to become someone a young person will actually ask for help. That relationship is the part that outlasts the glass.
( 06 ) The founder
James Stone is a master glass artist with more than five decades in the craft and over a hundred public art installations in hospitals, universities, resorts, and civic spaces across the country. From his public studio, Stone and Glass in Escondido, he's spent years teaching, mentoring, and putting torches in new hands.
Mobile After School Arts is the next chapter: taking everything the studio taught him about craft, patience, and fire — and driving it straight to the students who'd never otherwise get near a torch.
And then handing it on. A program that only works while one man is standing at the bench is a workshop, not an institution — so this one is being built from the beginning to run without him: trained teaching artists, a board chosen for what it knows, and students who grow into mentors and staff. James would rather build something that keeps going than something with his name on it.
( 07 ) Leadership & governance
Mobile After School Arts is a nonprofit corporation governed by a board of directors, not a personal project. We are seating that board deliberately — looking for the knowledge and relationships the program actually needs, rather than simply people who love glass.
A working board covers the ground the program has to cross. These are the seats we are filling:
Our board and staff are being seated now. If you read that list and recognised yourself, we would genuinely like to hear from you — start the conversation.
Teaching artists run the sessions. A program lead runs the calendar, the safety plan and the school relationships. The board holds the money, the mission and the hiring. As the program grows, those roles get filled by people who are trained for them — including, eventually, students who came up through the pathway.
That is the whole succession plan in one sentence: train people, then hand them the keys.
( 08 ) For schools & districts
You are being asked to let an outside organisation bring heat and tools onto your campus and work with your students. That deserves straight answers, not a brochure. Here is how we approach it — and we will put every piece of it in writing before we arrive.
The first lesson is safety and it never stops being the standing rule. Purpose-built stations, professional protective equipment, tools and techniques matched to experience, and supervision ratios set for hot work — not for a lecture hall. Students earn their way to heat.
Everyone we place in front of students is screened and cleared to your district's requirements — background checks, fingerprinting and mandated-reporter training — before a first session, not after.
Certificates of insurance, endorsements naming your district, safety plans, equipment and fuel handling procedures, and emergency protocols. Tell us what your district requires and we will provide it for review before anything is scheduled.
No student is photographed or named publicly without a signed release on file, and a family can decline without their student losing their place. Consent is per-student, and it is revocable.
Request our school partner packet We will send documentation, references and a walk-through of what a residency asks of your campus.
( 09 ) Get involved
Want the studio on your campus? Tell us about your school and your students — we'll walk you through how a residency works and what it needs.
Start the conversation →Artists, makers, teachers, patient humans — programs like this run on people who show up. Come lend your hands.
Raise your hand →Torches, glass, safety gear, seats for students — every piece of the program is sponsorable. Put your name on the spark.
Fuel a student →( 10 ) Ways to give
Every dollar here buys bench time for a young person who would not otherwise get near a torch. We are small enough that a single gift is genuinely felt, and we would rather tell you exactly where it goes than dress it up.
We are finishing the setup so that gifts land directly in the organisation's own account. Until that is live, email us and we will make it simple — and we will tell you honestly where your gift goes.
Email us about givingMobile After School Arts Inc is a California nonprofit corporation. We are not yet an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3), so please do not treat a gift as tax-deductible today. Email us for our current status and we will tell you plainly where we are in the process.
Steady monthly giving is what lets us promise a student that the studio will still be there in March. Each level below shows where a monthly gift goes.
Sponsor one student's place in a full 40-week residency — every session, every material, start to finish.
most needed
Fuel, glass, tools, torch maintenance, safety gear — the unglamorous essentials that keep the mobile studio on the road.
Underwrite an entire campus program, from the first session to the public unveiling — with your name behind it.
( 11 ) Questions, answered
Safety is the first lesson and the standing rule. Students work with professional protective equipment, purpose-built stations, and trained working artists at their side — with tools and techniques matched to their experience. Nobody touches fire before they have earned it, and supervision ratios are set for hot work rather than for a classroom.
Young people roughly ages 12–26 — which deliberately does not stop at graduation, because that is exactly when a lot of them lose every program they had. Demos and community events are for everyone; bring the whole family.
Nothing. No tuition, no materials fee, no equipment to buy. If a student can get to the session, they can do the work — and if getting there is the problem, tell us and we will try to solve that too.
Our goal is that cost is never the reason a campus says no. Programs are underwritten by sponsors and donors wherever possible, and some districts can fund a program like this from expanded-learning or arts funding they already hold. Reach out and we will work it out together.
Mobile After School Arts Inc is a California nonprofit corporation. We are not yet an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3), so please do not treat a gift as tax-deductible today. Email us for our current status and we will tell you plainly where we are in the process.
Either way, email contact@mobileafterschoolarts.org and we will send you our current documentation.
It keeps running — that is the design, not an afterthought. The program is built around trained teaching artists and a governing board rather than one man's calendar, and the pathway deliberately grows students into mentors and staff. A program that dies with its founder was never really an organisation.
Use the contact form and tell us about your campus. We will set up a call, walk through what a residency asks of your site, and send the documentation your district needs.
Yes — catch a live glassblowing demo, or visit our founder's public studio, Stone and Glass in Escondido.
Accountability
Mobile After School Arts Inc is a California nonprofit corporation. We are not yet an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3), so please do not treat a gift as tax-deductible today. Email us for our current status and we will tell you plainly where we are in the process.
We are early, and we would rather be transparent about that than impressive about it. Ask us for our governing documents, our current filings, or a plain accounting of what we have raised and what it has bought — and we will send them.
Contact
Schools, parents, artists, sponsors, press — this inbox is read by humans who love this work.
contact@mobileafterschoolarts.org
Escondido · San Diego County, California