Our History
Creative Connections was founded in 1992 in the home of founder Alan Steckler. In 1993 we piloted our first 12 exchanges. By 1994, we had moved into office space at 412 Main Street in Ridgefield, CT (where we stayed for 13 years) and facilitated exchanges between 18 countries and 1600 students.
In our early years, partner classes exchanged colorful letter scrapbooks and a variety of cultural projects including student-created quilts, artifact boxes, video documentaries, posters, and photo albums, traditional music and dance, and poetry.
Here is a selected list of our programming initiatives for the past 13 years:
- 1996 - Held our first videoconferences (using a pair of “Lumaphones” which transmitted still black and white still photos) between students in Ryazan, Russia and Wilton, CT.
- 1997 - Inaugurated our first ArtLink program between art students in China, South Africa, and the USA.
- 1998 - Mounted our first International Children’s Art Exhibit at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield.
- 1999 - Ran our first International Young Performers’ Tour with the Rossijanochka Folk Dance Troupe from St. Petersberg, Russia.
- 2002 - Began facilitating exchanges for children with disabilities in collaboration with VSA arts.
- 2003-5 - In collaboration with the Institute for Global Ethics and Ashoka, facilitated “Global Ethics Dialogues” between at-risk teenagers in Colombia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Poland, and Washington, DC.
- 2004 - In collaboration with the Rainforest Alliance, began our Rainforest Connections program,
- 2006 - Ran our first live videoconferences between middle school students in India, Russia, and the USA. Doubled our IYPT programming to 2 annual tours.
- 2007 - Moved into expanded office and videoconferencing space at 3 Quincy St, Norwalk, near I-95 and Metro-North trains.
Creative Connections has expanded from working with 300 children fifteen years ago to over 10,000 students today. We currently have school partners on 5 continents in 38 countries. In the USA, we facilitate programs in 98 schools in 20 states.
