In honor of New Urban Arts’ 20th anniversary year, The John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities, the Swearer Center for Public Service, the Brown Arts Initiative, and the Brown Alumni Association sponsored a panel discussion and lunchtime reception. 

Three of New Urban Arts’ founders are Brown Alumni, and it received extensive support from the Swearer Center during its early years, including a Royce Fellowship for founding Executive Director Tyler Denmead ‘98.

 

The panel included former New Urban Arts staff members, volunteers, and students; they discussed creative youth development, a recently coined term for work that New Urban Arts has been doing since its founding. This term seeks to organize a longstanding community of practice that intentionally integrates the arts and humanities with youth development principles, sparking young people’s creativity, building their critical learning and life skills, and offering them safer spaces during adolescence.