Advancing human creativity
Let curiosity lead the way
Miami · 2026
Why we exist
We are investing extraordinary resources in advancing artificial intelligence. Are we investing as intentionally in advancing humans?
Just when we need more creative, critical and independent thinkers, early evidence suggests overreliance on AI is beginning to erode some of those very capacities.
Our answer
A human-centered institution purpose-built to develop human creativity
Why creativity
It is the human capacity to imagine what does not yet exist, question what does, connect unrelated ideas and turn possibility into action. It is the essential human capacity for how we adapt, innovate and solve problems.
Why an institution
We’ve built institutions to educate us, heal us and advance science. None is purpose-built to develop human creativity across every age and stage of life.
Why now
Advancing humans has to happen in parallel with advancing technology. Employers are demanding it while people are currently craving new ways to connect, contribute and see their own value in this new AI-era.
Why Miami
Young, diverse, international and entrepreneurial. Miami is the ideal proving ground. We start here, prove it here, then build a movement that carries into communities across the nation.
Our theory of change
When people discover they are and can be creative, and practice it often enough, long enough and in the right environments, they strengthen capacities that change how they see themselves, how they think and how they engage with their lives.
Creative Inputs
What we design
Creative Practice
What people do
Creative Capacities
What grows
Transfer
Carried into life
Long-term outcomes
Learning, work, well-being
Surrounded by the right Creative Environment · physical, social and cultural
How we structure every program
The creative process is the backbone.
13 creative inputs, in every program.
Open
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Choose & Try
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Refine
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Integrate & Share
Reflection
Sharing & expression
Who we serve
Three streams, every stage of life
Wonder Works · Ages 10 to 18
“What Do You See?” Short Film Fellowship
Five young filmmakers, chosen from nearly 50 applicants, made original films with industry mentors and tools from Apple.
2026 question: When you think of creativity, what do you see?
Next year’s question
What do you see when you think about being human? What does being human mean to you?
Partners
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
Wonder Works · Ages 6 to 18
“What If?” Challenge
A free contest that invites young people to dream up bold answers to real questions, then share them with their community.
2026: What if you could redesign how people get around your community?
The prototypes are arriving. A car that cleans the air. A truck you pedal to start. A flower car that keeps the pollinators working.
Entries through Oct 30 · Three winners join the Junior Creative Directors Board (ages 10+)
Program partner
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
Wonder Works · Ages 6 to 18
Friday Night Creative Lights
Four Friday nights. One stage. Kids, tweens and teens build up their confidence week over week toward a live showcase of music, dance, poetry, comedy, spoken word and invention demos.
“Confidence isn’t built in a bedroom mirror. It’s built by showing up, week after week.”
Showcase · Friday, Oct 16 · YoungArts
Program partner
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
1
Everyone in one room
A panel of professionals from very different careers
On stage
Each shows how creativity drives their actual job
Students
2
They split into small groups
One professional per group
An engineer
A chef
A nurse
A founder
Each group works that career as a live case study. Nobody sits and watches.
3
Every group reports back
The whole room learns from every career at once, and students leave having met someone who may offer an internship.
Wonder Works · High school
Creative Career Mornings
An assembly where students do not sit and listen. They work.
Creativity is not a department. It is how the job actually gets done, in every career on the panel.
Students see how their human skills hold value as AI reshapes careers, and meet the people hiring for them.
Runs at a school or inside our Prototype
In development · building the panel and school partners
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
Creative Kinship · All ages
SideQuest Saturdays
Curiosity-driven adventures that turn familiar places into spaces to explore, create and connect.
First quest: Wynwood. A four-stop scavenger hunt through the murals, then a hands-on street art session with a working artist.
The real reward is learning to see the world around us differently, and picking up new ideas along the way.
First quest run October 2026 · Wynwood Walls Museum
Program partner
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
Creative Kinship · All ages
Underline Moves
A chance to grow your creative confidence, this free dance series under the stars at The Underline offers live music, dinner and instruction from BT Dance Studio. No rhythm, partner or experience required - just curiosity and boldness.
Fri, Nov 6
Salsa night
Fri, Nov 13
Bachata night
Fri, Nov 20
Tango night
SOLD OUT
Program partner
With thanks to Baptist Health and our Curiosity Circle
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
Eight rows, every role
Digging, watering, tucking seeds into the earth. Roles rotate so everyone tries every part.
Creative Kinship · Intergenerational
The Garden of Us
A Miami-Dade initiative inviting communities to design and build their own gardens: micro-sanctuaries rooted in creativity, nature and shared ownership.
We add the creative layer that turns a planting day into something families remember. Every family member decorates a take-home pot, then plants across eight rows together.
Built to stay once we leave. The garden belongs to the community that made it.
Saturday, Dec 12 · Overtown · Adults $20, kids free
Get tickets or sponsor a seat
Program partner
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
Creative Reset · Adults
I Wonder…Workshops
Adults who don't think they're creative but always wondered what it'd be like, step into real studios and learn hands-on from working artists, designers and makers. No experience required. Only curiosity.
2026 so far: recording studio, clay on canvas, poetry, photography, glass blowing, fashion and pottery. Every participant gets a printed yearbook of their journey.
Next: cake decorating, Nov 18 · design like an architect, Dec 8
Studio partners
5:00 PM
Arrival, ambient sound, find your spot in the gardens
5:45 PM
A 60 minute orchestral sound bath, musicians placed all around you
7:00 PM
Gentle awakening, then a sunset meal, reflection, and conversation
Creative Reset · Adults
How to Hear Stillness
Set in the historic grounds of a Miami garden and inspired by Max Richter's internationally-acclaimed Sleep, a traditional musical experience becomes something restorative, intimate and quietly powerful.
Musicians are positioned throughout the space, so the sound arrives from everywhere at once. Guests rest, breathe, and drift.
Stillness is one of life’s greatest enablers of creativity. This program treats it as a practice, not a luxury.
Program partner
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
Creative Reset · Executives and teams
Creative Edge
Executive coaching on the creative process, and on how a business puts that process to work in its leadership and its operations.
The same capacities we build in a nine-year-old are the ones employers now rank highest in an executive.
Booking now · also runs as “Creative Edge at Work” inside the Prototype
The 13 creative inputs · lit up where this program focuses
Curiosity
Knowledge
Possibility thinking
Agency
Productive uncertainty
Experimentation
Safe creative risk
Iteration
Critical thinking
Feedback
Collaboration
Reflection
Sharing & expression
How we run it
On site
We come into the office and work with a leadership team where the work actually happens.
Off site
Or we take the team out of the building entirely, which is usually where the thinking breaks open.
What it changes
Better operations
Teams that can sit with a problem long enough to find a better answer than the first one.
Better output
Leaders who treat creative process as a management discipline, not an away-day.
How we scale
From many separate programs to two ways of delivering them
10
Programs
running today
“What Do You See?” Short Film Fellowship
“What If?” Challenge
Friday Night Creative Lights
Creative Career Mornings
SideQuest Saturdays
Underline Moves
The Garden of Us
I Wonder… Workshops
How to Hear Stillness
Creative Edge
Each one strong on its own, but each one standing alone
Creativity into communities
Mobile Imagination Lab
We go where people already are: schools, parks and neighborhoods across South Florida.
Community into creativity
The Prototype,
then The Center
People come to us: a home built for creating, open every day.
Two methods · built to scale · tens of thousands of data points
The uLTIMATE vision · designed with Renzo Piano Building Workshop
A home purpose-built for human creativity
90,000 square feet in Miami, with a space for every way people create.
Renderings are illustrative and do not reflect final designs. Every space outlined in lime is tested first at The Hangar.
April to May 2027 · Coconut Grove
The Prototype at The Hangar
The Center, open for real, for the first time. Every room, every hour, programmed.
square feet, plus the lawn
April/May and August/Sept,
exact dates being finalized
2027
20,000
The road ahead
Two tracks, moving in parallel, to 2033
The Prototype tests and refines while we design and build, so The Center opens backed by evidence rather than assumptions.
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
Funded and running now
Mobile programming continues every year across South Florida
The Prototype
20,000 sq ft pop-ups
Design plans
Pop-up #1 at The Hangar, then pop-up #2
Pop-ups #3 to #6
Scale programs and operations, prepare for the move
Move in!
The Center
90,000 sq ft permanent home
Site analysis and due diligence
Concept and schematic design
Drawings and permits in hand
Break ground, then three years of construction
Tuning for opening
Grand opening
Our Miami Task Force
Planned and built with Miami, and for Miami
Rooted in place and open to the world
Consequential decisions will be first vetted through this list to ensure we keep the community and its interests front of mind.
BA
Belissa Alvarez
Executive Director, Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation
SA
Sarah Arison
President, Arison Arts Foundation
DB
Danielle Barreras
Community Engagement, The Children’s Trust
CB
Chad Bernstein
President & CEO, Guitars Over Guns
MD
Meg Daly
Founder, The Underline
JD
Jeff Davis
Board Chair, Miami City Ballet
JF
Jennifer Farah
Founder, Uncommon Practice
JG
Joan Godoy
CEO, Radical Partners
AW
Andreina Weichselbaumer
Senior Director of Strategy, Radical Partners
HH
Howard Herring
Retired President, New World Symphony
LL
Lourdes Lopez
Founder, Lourdes Lopez Arts
CM
Camilo Miguel, Jr.
President & CEO, Mast Capital
FS
Franklin Sirmans
President & CEO, PÉREZ Art Museum Miami
NZ
Natalia Zea
Chief Community Investment Officer, The Miami Foundation
JZ
Johann Zietsman
President & CEO, Adrienne Arsht Center
The organization behind the programs
Nearly sixty people are already at work on this, across five standing bodies and a contracted consultant bench.
10
Board of Directors
Governance and fiduciary oversight
13
Our Team
Staff designing and running the programs day to day
15
Miami Task Force
Institutional leaders opening doors and shaping what we run here
12
Creative Futures Council
National advisors on creativity, learning, work and technology
12
Junior Creative Directors Board
Young people with a real vote in what we make
And the firms building it with us
Renzo Piano Building Workshop · design architect
Davis Brody Bond · architect of record
Fisher Dachs Associates · theater planning
AMS Planning & Research · feasibility
Cost+Plus · cost management
The Projects Group · owner’s representative
Threshold Acoustics
IDEO
Twenty firms in all
Our growing family
Our work today and our future tomorrow is made possible by a growing base of visionary supporters
Founders scale the institution with a one-time gift, from Founders Circle to Founding Champion. There is only one Founding Period.
Curiosity Circle members fuel the programs every year, with annual underwriting from $10,000.
Founders Circle Kick Off
Thursday, November 19 · 6:30 PM
On Give Miami Day
Rendering is illustrative only. Our list of donors will be revealed in spring 2027.
Thank you.
Let curiosity lead the way.
Andrea Virgin · Chair & CEO
avirgin@tcai.org · tcai.org