Urban Arts CEO Philip Courtney delivered the energized Spark Talk “Video Gaming: An Equitable On-Ramp to Workforce Development” at the Infosys Foundation conference in Indianapolis May 8, 2025—advancing Urban Arts new STEAM talent pipeline, full of our “digital DaVincis.”
How many times would you have raised your hand?
Read the speech below to catch the spark.
____________________
Let’s play a game.
Raise your hand if you play or have played video games.
Raise your hand if you love video games.
Raise your hand if you hate video games and think they are the enemy.
Raise your hand if you play Wordle or any NY Times games.
Raise your hand if you are an artist.
Raise your hand if you’re a techie.
Raise your hand if you have ever coded anything in your life.
Raise your hand if you are still paying off your student loans.
Raise your hand if you went to college to study Game Design.
At Urban Arts, we teach video game design as a pathway to college and career for students from low-income communities.
Now, what does that actually mean?
It means our students learn all the skills it takes to make a video game—coding, computer science, animation, music, storytelling, collaboration, leadership. Everything except the caffeine addiction. That part comes later—in college.
But it wasn’t always this way.
I’ve been leading Urban Arts for 23 years. And for most of that time, we were doing a bit of everything—music, dance, poetry, painting. We were the Cheesecake Factory of arts education: a giant menu, but not every dish was great.
I’m an artist. I believe access to the arts is a human right. Because when a young person creates something that has never existed before, something clicks.
They see themselves as capable. As brilliant. They see themselves as possible.
But one day I had to face a hard truth—we weren’t setting up our students for economic success. We were providing them with an arts education that, while meaningful, wasn’t going to lead to on tap jobs or real economic mobility—at least not for the students we serve, students who don’t have soft landings like more resourced peers.
People often ask me how I’ve stayed in this role for so long. My answer? One of the privileges of being a CEO is you get to continually reinvent. When you see the future—you must pivot toward it. That is the responsibility of your role.
I noticed that one of our programs was always over-enrolled, always packed. It was our digital game design program. That was the moment the lightbulb went off. We would pivot toward that.
Every student at Urban Arts would learn how to code. Yes, they’d learn the related art forms too, but everyone would learn how to code. No exceptions. My staff looked at me like I was a madman. When I look back, it was the best professional decision I have ever made.
I didn’t love school as a kid. I found it lackluster. Subjects were taught in silos. Rote memorization. Minimum effort. But the real world isn’t divided like that. English isn’t just English. Math isn’t just math. Everything is everything.
That’s why I’ve always loved Leonardo DaVinci. He was a scientist, an inventor, a painter, a dreamer. He lived at the intersection of art and technology. And that’s where our students live too. When these worlds intersect—it’s magic.
At Urban Arts, students find us in 9th or 10th grade for our free afterschool programs. They come to us for many reasons: to make a game, study art, learn to program, get free college access, and win scholarships. The artists suffer through coding. The coders suffer through the art. By the end, artists become technologists, and technologists become artists, and all become proud owners of an impressive, state-of-the-art portfolio that’s as multidisciplinary as it is original.
These young high schoolers stay with us for years, progressing through ever-advancing coursework. We offer nearly 1,000 hours of programming. That’s longer than some relationships.
100% of our seniors matriculate through our College Access Program. In college our students major in computer science, game design, engineering, neuroscience, even philosophy—all with a creative twist. They become the Leonardo Da Vincis of their generation.
We have alumni at Amazon, Unity Technologies, Lucasfilm, Rockstar Games.
Did I mention our program is free?
Urban Arts’ North Star metric? College scholarship dollars.
Right now, our students have earned over $46 million in scholarships since 2017. Our goal is $100 million by 2030. Because incurring college debt is not an option for our students.
The video game industry is worth $300 billion—and it’s growing fast, steamrolling music and movies combined.
And we are not just getting our students into the gaming industry as every industry is becoming gamified.
In healthcare, mental health apps turn therapy into missions and side quests. Apps from Duolingo to Nike Run give badges and level up. Building your credit score? There’s an app with a leaderboard. Driver training, pilot training, self-driving cars—all require sophisticated simulators.
Gamification works because it taps into motivation.
It’s sticky. It’s fun. It’s human. So if the world is gamifying everything, why wouldn’t we gamify education? That’s what we’re doing at Urban Arts. We’re not just preparing students for college—we’re preparing them to shape the future of every industry. Let’s gamify the heck out of this thing. Let’s provide students from low-income communities with a front-row seat to the future economy. Let’s change economic trajectories in a single generation. Let’s embrace the arts by harnessing the tech.
Let’s unleash a new generation of digital DaVincis.
Full video here.
#infosysfoundation #digitaldavincis #sparktalk #gamify
