The Brooklyn’s Finest Studio Project, completed over 5 days in May 2026 continued Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School's (BCAM) longstanding tradition of producing and releasing annual mixtapes of original music. This year's project blew out this concept by partnering BCAM with three of its closest District 13 partner schools Bedford Academy, Banneker High School and Westinghouse High School.
The idea being that young adults deserve to engage and own the real creative, collaborative and intellectual process of making original music and media and then promoting, marketing, distributing and ultimately selling the products for their own professional experience and even personal income. It is also a unique experience to have four closely knit high schools work together on this sort of project. Thus, the project took a group of 9th/10th Grade students from each of the high schools and had them spend a week in The Bridge Studios, a Brooklyn-based professional music studio, collaborating around the theme The Growing Pains of My Young Adult Life.
The students worked with professional producers, musicians, and artist-educators to write, arrange and record six (6) original songs, to comprise our “Brooklyn’s Finest ‘26” mixtape. Their work was also professionally filmed, and this content is being developed into a short film on the project.
The Brooklyn's Finest Studio Project will culminate with an upcoming professional listening party and widespread release of the music and film products. We are proud to share that this project was underwritten and made possible by the generous funding of BCAM High School, Westinghouse High School, Grand Street Settlement Community Organization, and The Action Lab NY.
Please enjoy this short video shot, arranged and edited by BCAM student filmmaker Zaniya Young, which captures a slice of the project's essence.
