Magic Box Productions is a multi-faceted video production group specifically geared to the needs of educational groups and arts organizations, offering video productions, workshops, and videotapes.

Mission Statement
Magic Box Productions seeks to educate students and teachers in the language of the moving image through i mmersion in film, video and media arts; integrate the process of digital storytelling into schools by bringing professional artist-educators to work with schools and cultural organizations in the New York metropolitan area; and enable students and teachers to use technology to deepen understanding and enhance expression by creating original work.

History
Founded in 2001, Magic Box Productions is an award-winning producer of documentaries for and about arts organizations and an approved arts-in-education vendor with the New York City Department of Education. Educational videos produced and directed by Executive Director Nelle Stokes have received national distribution and have become established features of school curriculum. Magic Box is also the official New York videographer of WebPlay, the internet-based arts education project that links children from around the world to learn about theatre and each other.

Magic Box arts-in-education programs have reached thousands of students, families and teachers in the New York city area, providing them with opportunities for creative expression, community and cultural connections, and access to new technologies. In a variety of hands-on media arts workshops, student participants have explored their lives and community through photography, used documentary to chronicle school and community events, and combined dance, video and poetry to tell their own original stories.

In 2005-2006 Magic Box receives it’s first School Arts Partnership Grant from Partners for Arts Education to help seventh graders at the Scholars Academy in Rockaway Park, Queens create an original documentary about the school’s first year in its new site. Magic Box was also asked to expand a program it piloted last year which offered photography workshops to school children and their families.

Previous Magic Box education projects have included: public service announcements about violence prevention and peer pressure for FEMA's Project Liberty; a photography series entitled "Through Our Eyes" in which Queens students explored their lives and community; a documentary of a unique dance program for deaf and hearing students from the Lexington School for the Deaf and PS 164; a history and culture of the Rockaways at PS 114; and a retelling of the trial of Julius Caesar by PS 105 Scholars Program.

Magic Box and its Executive Director have received awards in the Telly and Accolade Competitions for outstanding craftsmanship and creativity in film and video. Honors were granted to Producing Partnerships: The Art of Learning, which chronicles the theater-in-education work of The Roundabout Theatre Company, and S.A.R.I.: Telling the Story, which covered the New York Times Foundation’s School Arts Rescue Initiative as it provided artistic outlets for New York city schoolchildren after the September 11 attacks. In addition, Through the Eyes of Children: 9/11 and Beyond, was chosen as an Official Selection of the Brooklyn Arts Council’s 37th International Film and Video Festival and was screened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Click here to read about the Executive Director, Nelle Stokes.