New Urban Arts

The Future

During a strategic planning process in 2004, youth expressed how one, warehouse-sized studio, or, small, satellite studios throughout the city would threaten the intimacy and diversity achieved in our present one. We learned there is no real cost saving by serving more students through our model. On the contrary, growth presents far too great an opportunity cost to individuals involved. The needs beyond arts programming of the students we work with necessitates intimacy and a personalized learning environment promoted by smallness.

In conversations with young people through the planning process, they often expressed that New Urban Arts “must get the word out” more; and the more the studio is full with youth, the more their experience and commitment is validated. They also consistently expressed their interest in making sure that other young people know about opportunities at New Urban Arts.

We feel real change through our model is most likely to occur in the lives of young people when they feel responsible for an organization that feels big, but is small. Ironically, this tension also exists organizationally as we consider our sustainability and potential impact. How can New Urban Arts retain a small local practice, but be big enough to remain financially stable and encourage the broad change outlined by our mission? But, remaining small and nimble so that we can adapt, evolve, and affect change in the lives of local youth should not mean that we limit access to relationships that can challenge us.

Our first artist-mentor founded New Urban Arts in 1997. One entrepreneur with a big idea and broad support provoked change for youth in Providence. Subsequently, numerous high school students have become leaders at New Urban Arts by serving as artist mentors. Artist mentors have moved beyond our studio to start new initiatives or contribute to existing ones throughout the country. They are becoming teachers, artists, and administrators in arts organizations. As our alumni move throughout the country, we are learning that emerging leaders – those who have participated in our programs as well as like-minded programs throughout the country - have little support to exchange ideas and grow their practice. By remaining isolated, there are few opportunities for this leadership to develop a unifying agenda and language. If this leadership grows and evolves, while remaining disconnected, there will be few opportunities to leverage the collective resources and expertise needed to address the root causes that prevent creativity from gaining a stronghold in American life.

We believe relationships among entrepreneurial, emerging artists across sectors and regions can promote systemic change and improve local practice. For New Urban Arts, a network of emerging leadership presents the opportunity to push our model and improve our impact on local youth. It strengthens our capacity by establishing a fluid exchange of leadership by attracting emerging leaders from across the country and introducing our emerging leaders to innovative practice and support beyond our studio. We also become porous, allowing for the ideas of promising leaders to influence our local practice, and vice versa, challenging our organization to adapt and evolve. While remaining small, our organization also interconnected so that we can better leverage and attract resources and achieve some of the advantages of being big. Finally, it affords us the opportunity to change an entrenched pattern on a national level, without compromising the quality of our local programming.

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