IP Creative Residency: Mentoring Community Orgs to Maximize Impact
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Isenberg Projects believes that the best communities are hyper collaborative and value different perspectives. This core philosophy of our business requires us to check any assumptions we have about the needs of a community, neighborhood, partner, or audience.
We push our clients to do the same, conducting intense research studies, surveys, and interviews in every area that we work in. This allows us to set an overall mission for our work, and a rigorous set of success metrics of how that mission will be actualized in engagement strategies, events, programs, and beyond. We have found this process to not only provide a better work product, but stronger bonds within the communities we’re operating within.
It has proven so valuable for our clients, that in 2022 Isenberg Projects branched out into replicating this process for organizations through a “Make It Happen” creative residency. From 2022 through 2024, we partnered each year with a nonprofit organization or small business seeking to grow their impact. Residents received a dedicated bank of agency time, along with ongoing mentorship, advocacy, and support that extended beyond the residency year.
FUTURE CHEFS
In 2022 we worked with Future Chefs, an out-of-school time youth development program that prepares young people for success after high school and a lifetime of economic security through training in the culinary arts and mentorship. After moving their facilities to a new neighborhood, Future Chefs sought to understand the best way to engage with their community. Through our creative residency, we presented a neighborhood scan, marketing material analysis, and a curated selection of event concepts to aid them in the next step of co-creating their new home with their community and engaging their audience.
Learn more about this work in our blog post:
Life Skills, Knife Skills: Lessons from the Future Chefs Kitchen.
YOUTH PRIDE RHODE ISLAND
In 2022 Youth Pride, Inc. (YPI) was also awarded time to work with the Design Department at Isenberg Projects. YPI is the only nonprofit exclusively serving LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 5 and 23 in the state of Rhode Island. While their website and marketing channels are home to a wealth of incredibly valuable stories and resources, their platform and visual identity had remained stagnant since the early 2010s. We were thrilled to collaborate and refresh the design of their brand to be more impactful, inclusive, and aesthetically pleasing. Pairing an updated identity suite with a new dynamic website, we created a toolkit of marketing materials that would resonate with their community while ushering them into the next decade of work.
YOUTHBUILD BOSTON
Our 2023 resident YouthBuild Boston (YBB) provides underserved young people with the support and credentials needed to successfully enter the construction and design industry. YBB was in need of a brand identity that was reflective of not only their history of working on Building sites across Boston, but also their current and future offerings across the fields of construction and design. To that end, our team led an in depth workshopping and research process, engaging students and staff in the YBB community to co-create a visual identity that would grow with the new era of the organization.
MAKE IT MATTER
The Isenberg Projects 2025 Residency with Thunder Road Projects
Building on the success of our Make It Happen residency, we evolved the program in 2025 to become Make It Matter—a more focused, impact-driven residency designed to support purpose-led creative businesses ready to deepen their influence. Through our earlier cohorts, we saw that the greatest, most lasting outcomes came from working with organizations whose missions were already rooted in community, equity, and long-term change. Make It Matter reflects that learning, shifting our focus toward entrepreneurs who are not only building strong businesses, but actively shaping the cultural and creative ecosystems around them.
Thunder Road Projects embodies this evolution. Founded by Malakhai Pearson, the studio is already creating meaningful opportunities for young POC creatives in Boston through thoughtful storytelling and production work. Our 2025 residency centered on helping Thunder Road Projects strengthen its internal infrastructure, clarify its long-term vision, and develop strategies for sustainable growth, so their community-first mission could scale without losing its values. Together, we translated purpose into practice, ensuring the impact of their work extends well beyond individual projects and into the future of Boston’s creative community.