View of a bookstore or library with shelves of books, a green velvet sofa with a decorative cloth, flags, and various lighting fixtures.
A store window display with various items including clothing, hats, and accessories, seen through the glass with reflections and interior lighting.
A room featuring a green sofa with a decorative pillow and a blanket, black and white rug, white bookcase filled with books, framed posters on the wall, a flag, and various promotional signs, with a large window and ceiling lighting.
An office or art gallery space with diverse artwork on white walls, multiple desks with computers, office supplies, and chairs, illuminated by large pendant lights, with reflections of pink neon light in the glass window.
A wall filled with framed posters and artwork, including colorful illustrations and vintage ads, with a prominent red poster featuring a black woman with afro hairstyle and a quote about race and slavery. A small table in front holds books, papers, and decorative figurines, and there's a glass of water on the table.
Inside a retail store with glasses partition walls, a mannequin dressed in a rainbow-colored sweater with star patterns, a desk with a laptop, and various shelves with objects and books. Bright overhead lights illuminate the area.
An indoor workspace with a table covered by a black cloth with gold designs, surrounded by black and yellow chairs, and decorated with decorative yellow hanging lights. There are bookshelves on the left and a glass wall with a reflection of the lights. In the center, there is a computer monitor, a desk lamp, and framed pictures. The background includes stacked chairs and a colorful floor and wall mural.
A cluttered workspace with a table, a computer, a red construction tool, and various office and craft supplies. A wall in the background has a mural of people sitting in a line. There are shelves with boxes, tubes, and bottles. Clothing hangs on a rack, and a sewing machine is on the table.

The New Negro Republic Creators Lab is a small heritage research, creative-production, and gathering space located inside the Build A Dream Incubator at 4 Minthorne Street in Black Staten. (Staten Island)

The Lab is designed as a working environment where Negro history is studied, interpreted, created from, and shared with the public. Rather than operating as a traditional museum or classroom, the Creators Lab brings archival research, material culture, genealogy, design, media, apparel, public history, and community programming together under one roof.

Its guiding principle is simple:

Learn the Past. Create the Future.

Inside the Lab are two distinct working spaces: the Negro History Room and the Negro Cloth Room.

The Negro History Room houses books, archival materials, photographs, newspapers, ephemera, memorabilia, genealogical resources, and selections from the Negro Life & Thought Collection. It serves as a place for research, historical discussion, lectures, archive-based workshops, oral history, genealogy, and the development of projects such as Black Staten, Negro History Class, and other public-history initiatives.

The Negro Cloth Room is the Lab’s creative production space. Here, historical research moves from the archive into physical and visual culture through apparel, textile design, merchandise, graphics, collage, media production, and other forms of creative experimentation. It is also the working home of Negro Cloth — “Made by Negroes, Apparel with Identity.”

The Creators Lab regularly transforms beyond its two rooms. Film screenings, lectures, exhibitions, workshops, youth programs, listening sessions, cultural gatherings, and special programs expand into the larger Build A Dream Incubator spaces, allowing the Lab to function as both an intimate research studio and a public cultural venue.

Programs developed from the site include Black August Sunday Film Night, Artists for Reparations, Negro Archive Collage, Black Staten educational programs, genealogy workshops, Negro History Class, youth Creator Lab experiences, and other experimental cultural programs.

The Lab is intentionally small. It is a place to test ideas before they become institutions—to research a story, build an archive around it, turn that knowledge into programming or creative work, invite the community into the process, document what happens, and preserve what is produced.

In that way, the New Negro Republic Creators Lab is not simply an office or event space.

It is a living Negro cultural laboratory—a place where history becomes source material for contemporary creation, where objects become lessons, where research becomes experience, and where the past is actively used to build what comes next.

New Negro Republic Creators Lab
Build A Dream Incubator
4 Minthorne Street
Staten Island, New York, 10301

Research • Development • Genealogy • Activations

Learn the Past. Create the Future.

Rashid Littlejohn, Cultural Architect, New Negro Republic