Untitled Document

March 14 , 2007
This enews is also available online for easy reading.
Visit www.newurbanarts.org to learn more about New Urban Arts.

>> Starbucks awards New Urban Arts $8,000 through a national grant competition to support literacy arts programs for Providence youth.

>> This Friday, an art exhibit by students from New Urban Arts and TALC, The Adolescent Leadership Council of Hasbro Children's Hospital, opens at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket.

>> If you missed the local press on the departure of founder and director, Tyler Denmead, read below.

>> What do bike locks, glue sticks, and a DVD player have in common? New Urban Arts needs them! If you are interested in donating materials and supplies to support our programs, check under "What's New" for our latest wish list of goodies.

Starbucks awards New Urban Arts $8,000 through a national grant competition to support literacy arts programs for Providence public high school students.

Since its inception in 1997, The Starbucks Foundation has awarded over $12 million to more than 700 literacy and youth organizations throughout the United States and Canada. These grants provide organizations support in the development of innovative learning opportunities for youth in arts and literacy and environmental education.

This year, the Starbucks Foundation received 1,400 applications from across the country and awarded 120 grants. New support from this national foundation is critical in ensuring that over 150 Providence public high school students have access to an enriching arts education during the critical after-school hours.

The grant award specifically supports the Words Within program at New Urban Arts, which offers yearlong mentoring in creative writing and literacy arts and also provides young voices the opportunity to perform, exhibit and publish their work.

Funding for the Starbucks Foundation has come mostly from Starbucks Coffee Company and also from individual donations.

A Collaborative Youth Art Exhibit opens this Friday in Pawtucket!

This exhibition has been directed and facilitated by John Jacobson (J.J.) a Pawtucket resident currently in transition from recording studio owner into the world of real estate developement. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated in the photo department in 1994. He has served for three years as an artist mentor at New Urban Arts, where he mentors in painting, photography, computer arts and sound design.

J.J. also volunteers with T.A.L.C,The Adolescent Leadership Council of Hasbro Children's Hospital. T.A.L.C. is a group of adolescents and Brown University student mentors who have chronic illnesses. The group is devoted to providing a forum for teens with chronic illness to express themselves and to providing leadership to Hasbro Children's Hospital and to the wider community regarding issues surrounding chronic illness in childhood.

T.A.L.C. was started by residents in the Brown University Medical School Triple Board program, Gary Maslow, MD and Wendy Froehlich,MD,and Kim Alexander a photographer and outdoor educator, in September 2005 supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics and now is supported by the Rhode Island Department of Health. The program has won a resident advocacy award from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Machines With Magnets [MWM] is a recording studio, music collective, and art space located in the Arts & Entertainment District of Historic Downtown Pawtucket. The MWM gallery space provides a place for exhibitions, performances and creative collaboration between artists, musicians, and non-profit organizations.

*****

If you missed the news coverage of Tyler's departure in the Providence Journal last week, read below:

Editorials
www.projo.com,
01:00 AM EST on Saturday, March 10, 2007

Denmead's urban uplift

"Tyler Denmead is an unusual sort of inner-city hero. He was raised in privilege (his name might suggest that to some) in Columbus, Ohio, where he attended private school, and went to Brown, where he was a pre-med student for a time.

A trip to France to study art history led to him being hired by a chef to teach him English. In return, the chef became a mentor in the arts for young Tyler. When he returned home, he began to write and draw for aesthetic pleasure, activities he might never have done without meeting the chef.

This unexpected French experience indirectly led to his creation of New Urban Arts, the ingenious after-school arts studio for Providence high-school students where he has been executive director for a decade.

It began with a $4,000 grant from the Swearer Center at Brown in Mr. Denmead's senior year there. With that, he rented a fourth-floor apartment in Grace Church downtown and started off with 10 high-school students and four artist mentors. "I had no arts-education background," Mr. Denmead told The Journal's Linda Borg. "I was as reliant on learning from them (the students) as they were from me."

Ten years later, New Urban Arts is on Westminister Street, across the street from Classical High School, and close to two other high schools, and has grown to 150 students, 16 artist-mentors and an annual budget of $200,000. The organization has been recognized by, among others, the President's Committee on Arts and the Humanities as one of the best arts and youth-development programs in America for four straight years.

New Urban Arts has spawned a generation of young painters, writers and sculptors who are encouraged to take intensely imaginative creative chances but with the comfort of working in what is also a collective enterprise. "This place teaches kids to understand the value of meaningful relationships," Mr. Denmead notes.

Providence, of course, seems an apt place for such a program, with its many working artists, its superb space for making art in its many old buildings and the renowned Rhode Island School of Design. But it took someone with the vision and persistence of Tyler Denmead to make it work. (For the program's first few years, he sometimes couldn't meet payroll and was living off his credit card.)

However, now he believes that, after 10 years, he and the organization need fresh blood. So he's going off to Cambridge University, in England, for graduate studies in arts, culture and education. We hope that he returns to Providence - and runs for mayor? Meanwhile, he leaves quite a legacy for a 30-year-old."

For a feature article, "New Urban changes," by Linda Borg that appeared in Lifebeat in the Providence Journal on March 7th, click here.

What do bike locks, glue sticks, and a DVD player have in common?

New Urban Arts needs them! If you are interested in donating materials and supplies to support our programs, check under "What's New" for our latest wish list of goodies.

Friends and Supporters:

Photographs by students Mary Adewusi, John Nguon, and Tiffany Pires will be on display at the RISD Museum, this Thursday, March 15th, for Gallery Night.

Heidi Born, New Urban Arts, artist mentor, designed the 2007 Providence Roller Derby Calendar. For more info about the Providence Roller Derby, which kicks off its new season in May, visit www.providencerollerderby.com.

Stay up to date with www.RezaRitesRI.com, which promotes the voices of Rhode Island's ethnically, socially, and artistically diverse.

Thank you to the RISD Balls, the RISD basketball team, for their recent donation.

As always, the ever popular Tiny Showcase.

Learn about exciting cultural events in Rhode Island at www.rifutures.org.

And, students and families at New Urban Arts are thankful this year for College Visions.

About New Urban Arts
New Urban Arts is a nationally recognized arts studio for high school students and emerging artists in Providence, Rhode Island. Our mission is to build a vital learning community that empowers young people, developing creative practices they can sustain throughout their lives. We serve 125 high school students and 15 emerging artists through after-school and summer programs each year.