The Harlem Maker Fair: Programs, Projects & Partners

Karioki Crosby is the Founder of Latimer Heights and has developed the Harlem Maker Fair as a Bundles Scholar.  Latimer Heights produces the Harlem Maker Fair and offers digital literacy workshops for children, youth, and adults at Columbia University, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Microsoft, and HIP HOP HACKS.  

In 2021, Crosby and fellow Bundles Scholar Regan Sommer McCoy received a professional development grant for The Mixtape Museum and Latimer Heights from the Institute of Museum and Library Services' program Game Plan, a national initiative to integrate game design into museum education programs.  Crosby and McCoy will discuss this and other work to promote and increase student engagement (especially during and after the COVID pandemic), computer programming/literacy, wellness/health, and teamwork.

In addition to leading Latimer Heights, Crosby is a digital literacy educator at Queens Public Library’s Queensbridge Tech Lab, the system-wide manager for the Queens Public Library robotics program, and a co-chair of the Queens Public Library’s President's Council on Racial Equity.  He was a founding teacher in and creator of the visual arts program at KIPPNYC Public Schools, a network of fifteen public charter schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem and Washington Heights.   Crosby has been a teacher-educator at the Guggenheim Museum, The New York Hall of Science, The New York Historical Society, the Lewis Latimer House Museum, and The Morgan Library and Museum.

Regan Sommer McCoy has 15+ years of experience in the music industry working with hip-hop artists. She is the founder of The Mixtape Museum, which encourages the research, archiving, and data analysis of mixtapes and seeks to achieve systematic preservation in the DJ and hip-hop communities. In 2016, she launched Hip-Hop Hacks, a hackathon that offers students the opportunity to explore how hip-hop inspires technological innovation. Sommer is a grantee of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, a charter member of the William & Mary Hip-Hop Collection, and serves as an education committee member with the Hip-Hop Education Center and Universal Hip-Hop Museum. By day she manages databases at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The Columbia University A’Lelia Bundles Community Scholars Program, administered by the Office of Government and Community Affairs and the School of Professional Studies, enables independent scholars to pursue their lifelong learning aspirations, whether it be completing an independent project or attaining skills in a particular area. The program helps to foster and deepen ties between the University and the many independent members of the cultural and intellectual community surrounding it.  The program was named in honor of longtime University Trustee A’Lelia Bundles in 2020.

For questions, please contact George Calderaro at gc2212 [[at]] columbia [[dot]] edu (gc2212[at]columbia[dot]edu).