About

Turnstile’s mission is to advance public knowledge about the meaning of place, foster connections and understanding between people of diverse backgrounds, and inspire and reflect a culture of community participation through providing welcoming, well-researched, inclusive, and engaging experiences and resources to people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. The company itself achieves its mission through Turnstile Tours, the foundation of the company that operates ongoing public tour programming and research efforts in partnership with select nonprofit organizations, and Turnstile Studio, a consulting practice that supports cultural and government organizations in place-making efforts, visitor engagement, and in the development of tours, programs, and exhibits.

As a New York State-registered benefit corporation, we are legally required to annually review our social and environmental impact measured against our mission, as well as third party standards, and post our findings on our website. In 2017 and 2018, Turnstile Tours was honored by B Lab as “Best for the World Overall,” for scoring in the top 10% of Certified B Corporations in the world, as well as “Best for Community” and “Best in Governance”.

Nine photographs from tours, including a bus in the foreground with ship repair cranes in the background, people on bicycles near a field, a young man in an orange shirt next to an older man wearing a beret sitting at a table, a woman in an apron closing her eyes as a young man to her side smiles with food cart in the background, eight people posing together on a farm, an industrial atrium with tour goers looking up, a woman tasting roasted meats offered on a tray by a man in a baseball cap, a priest standing in front of a group in a church, and four people smiling as a man shows a newspaper articleTurnstile Tours include the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn Army Terminal, Prospect ParkBrooklyn’s Avenue of Puerto Rico and the Moore Street Public Market, Essex Street Market, and of Manhattan’s Food Carts and Food Trucks, and custom-made tours, all of which are offered in partnership with select non-profit organizations. At least 5% of all of our ticket sales goes towards supporting the work of select nonprofit organization that help to keep neighborhoods vital and thriving. All of our staff members are engaged behind-the-scenes in ongoing research, archival and field-based, to ensure that the tours we offer are relevant, dynamic, entertaining, and thoughtful.

In addition to developing and offering toursTurnstile Studio offers technical assistance and consulting services to clients that include cultural and government organizations in their efforts to more effectively engage the public through place-making and/or site specific projects, exhibitions, tours, and programs. Our core competencies include storytelling techniques, research and content production, visitor engagement and visitor services, accessibility for visitors with disabilities, cartography and graphic design, and tour and program development and evaluation.

We are so very grateful to the many people and institutions that have made our work possible.

For more information, please contact us at info@turnstiletours.com or by phone at (347) 903-8687.