Brittany Sternberg is the new director of the Saranac Lake Youth Center. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — Brittany Sternberg is ecstatic to be able to keep working with kids after the ADK ArtRise art education business she co-founded closed around a month ago. She’s the Saranac Lake Youth Center’s new director, and feels this position is a continuation of the work she was doing at her business.

“I get the sense that the last five years I spent at ArtRise were actually leading to this,” Sternberg said.

The downtown educational arts studio closed at the end of June after five years of operation. The co-owners said they were not able to stay financially viable.

Sternberg had another job lined up, but that fell through on the same week ArtRise closed. She happened to tell an ArtRise visitor she was looking for a new job. That person told SLYC Program Assistant Teresa Troy at a community garden event.

“Three or four people spoke up right away,” Troy said. “They said ‘Oh, I know Brittany. She’d be amazing for that.'”

There’s quite a bit of overlap between ArtRise and the youth center, she said. Both are a form of child care where students gather after school to hang out in a safe, supervised supportive space where they can be creative and talk with friends.

“It feels like it was meant to be,” she said.

Through the classes she led at ArtRise, Sternberg saw shy kids learn new ways to engage with the world, their emotions and their peers.

Troy said more than half of the kids at the youth center are already into the arts and use the supplies every day. She’s excited to have programs designed for them.

“Oh, I’ve got ideas,” Sternberg said.

She has binders full of project ideas from ArtRise and plans to get grants to do new projects. After she gets settled, she wants the center to help the kids put out a quarterly zine with their artwork, poems and stories.

Sternberg also made a lot of connections at ArtRise that she plans to follow through on things like field trips.

SLYC is open from 2:30 to 6 p.m. from Monday to Friday during the school year, with some summer hours and activities. Sternberg’s first day with the kids will be on the first day of school.

Troy said they have a “core group” of about a dozen kids, with around 50 more sometimes hanging out there or popping in throughout the day. She hears each director attracts a different group.

Sternberg can’t wait to get to know them. Some she already knows from ArtRise.

In 2024, through ArtRise, she facilitated the “Welcoming and Belonging” community mural on the side of the building, with SLYC teens contributing a panel.

Sternberg started working with kids while in college, when she was the arts director for the Lake Clear Girl Scout’s camp for a summer. She found out she loved it. She also has an 8-year-old daughter who she said will one day attend the youth center.

Children’s creativity is not as jaded as adult creativity, she said. At ArtRise, she always met adults who said they “don’t have a creative bone” in their body before finding out they really did. Kids have less fear about failing at art, and just do it, she said.

She loves to see the spark in their eyes when they “get” something. Seeing their confidence build as they start a project unsure of how it will work and make it click is exciting to her.

Troy is excited the kids will have that comfort and familiarity already with Sternberg. The youth center feels like home for many.

Inside, the rooms are full with a pool table, air hockey table, video games, board games, arts and craft supplies, instruments, couches and a full kitchen. The snack cabinet is full. There’s a closet overflowing with clothes in the back.

It’s also a place for informal counseling and discussions on relationships, family, drug and school issues.

At ArtRise, Sternberg heard students discuss these things from time to time. She doesn’t have counseling experience, but she’d sometimes pull them aside afterward to offer some advice to point them in the right direction.

“I want to be the kind of adult that they see as a safe person they can come to when they have a problem,” she said. “I think being in middle school and high school is a difficult period in anyone’s life.”

She’s also seen teenagers work through their feelings through art.

At the youth center, she expects the kids to have a sense of responsibility for their actions, to curate their environment with their attitudes.

“Their behavior dictates what their time is like here,” Sternberg said. “A little freedom goes a long way.”

Sternberg is taking on the director position just two weeks away from the 28th annual Olga Memorial Footrace on Aug. 16, which benefits the youth center this year. The goal is to raise $10,000 for increased programming.

Sternberg started on Friday and has already spent the week prepping for the Olga.

The 5K and 10K runs and 5K walk around Moody Pond and down by Lake Flower will also benefit the Saranac Lake Rotary Club’s literacy program that puts a book in the hands of every child in the elementary school.

To register for the Olga, go to adirondackcoastevents.com.