Urban Arts and Booze Allen Host Students—with Mobs and Axes
On October 27, middle and high school students from five D.C. schools came together for the third annual Duel in the District, a Minecraft Education Game Jam hosted by Urban Arts with Booz Allen Hamilton and BLN24.
The event introduces students to careers in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM), showing how the creativity and problem-solving skills they use in gaming can connect to meaningful opportunities in advanced technology.
Working in teams, students designed virtual solutions to challenges in their communities, including affordable housing, green infrastructure, and better-connected neighborhoods. They explored how tools such as modeling and simulation help people test ideas, consider tradeoffs, and envision solutions before they’re built. “If you turn the learning into a game, you’ll get the buy-in more, you’ll get them intrigued, and to be honest, they’ll be the ones creating a new set of Minecraft 2.0. You never know.” —Tara Walker, Science Teacher and District Science Lead.
Now in its third year, Duel in the District reflects a shared commitment to expanding access to technology education and creating hands-on opportunities for young people to explore advanced technology and future careers.
“The space we’re in is always amazing. It’s the Helix Innovation Center for Booz Allen and we have a lot of programs here that I’ve attended or we host but today feels very different…when I walked in and the balloons were being hung and the color and the energy…it’s a level that automatically conveys creativity is going to happen here.”—Christine Skennion Hoisington, Director of Community Impact & Philanthropy; and Executive Director of the Booz Allen Foundation.
“What I see in the room today is a room full of creators, paired with incredible mentors and people who care to grow the next generation.” —Brian Nguyen, BLN24 (CEO)
“Every year, I’m reminded that creativity and joy go hand in hand. Watching students build solutions for D.C. together in Minecraft is proof that when young people get to play, they start to see a future they can build themselves.”—Shannon Moran, Director of National Programs, Urban Arts
Duel in the District is supported by Booz Allen’s TechXplore initiative, which aims to equip more than one million young people with skills in AI, cybersecurity, and advanced technology.
Thank you to our partners, educators, and everyone who made year three possible.
Special thanks to Jeff R. and Jinnyn Jacob, MPP, for making this possible each year. Thank you to the team at Urban Arts: Shannon Moran, Savannah Chapman, Vanessa Cole, Richard Morin, Kathleen Elie. Thank you especially to the teachers and schools for bringing your amazing students, inspiring them, and going the extra mile: Participating schools: Friendship Chamberlain Middle School, Eliot-Hine Middle School, McKinley Technology High School, Ron Brown College Preparatory High School, H.D. Woodson High School.
Interested in partnering with us? Reach out at development@urbanarts.org.
#MinecraftEducation #GameBasedLearning #STEMforAll #projectbasedlearning
Urban Arts Celebrates Inaugural Founders Lab, Where NYC Students Used AI to Build Their Own Startups
NEW YORK, Oct. 8, 2026 – Urban Arts today announced the successful completion of the inaugural Founders Lab, a ten-day accelerator that gave 20 students from low-income New York City communities the opportunity to use artificial intelligence to turn problems they know firsthand into startup ventures they could build, test and pitch.
The pilot brought together four teams of five students for an intensive startup experience spanning ideation, product development and customer validation. Along the way, they used AI as a constructive tool to research markets, evaluate competitors and synthesize feedback, while learning to think like founders by testing assumptions, taking risks and refining their ideas. The program reflects a broader shift in entrepreneurship: AI is rapidly reducing the barriers to turning an idea into a working product, but access to the mentorship, networks and business knowledge needed to become a founder remains uneven.
“Urban Arts has spent decades helping young people see a future for themselves in technology. Founders Lab takes that a step further by showing them they can own a piece of what comes next,” said Philip Courtney, CEO of Urban Arts. “The goal isn’t just to build a talent pipeline into the AI economy. It’s to build an entrepreneurial pipeline. That means giving students the tools to test a concept, learn from failure, and keep pushing until they hae something they’re ready to put in front of the world.”
From PONG to the Metaverse: Game Design & Creative Technology Careers
Urban Arts graduate Giselle Muriel interviews PONG inventor Al Alcorn and Tilt Five founder Jeri Ellsworth about the game design industry and where students can find opportunity today.
At 24, fresh out of college, Al Alcorn took a job at a tiny startup called ATARI for $100 a month less than he was already earning. The company had three engineers, no roadmap, and no industry to join, because video games didn’t exist yet. As Al put it during the webinar, “We didn’t know much about how you’re supposed to do this, and we kind of made things up as we went along.”
His boss Nolan Bushnell, a Video Game Hall of Famer, handed him what was supposed to be a training exercise: build a simple electronic version of table tennis, learn from it, and apply it to the next project. But Al kept improving it instead. He sped up the ball to make the game more fun. He figured out how to add sound. ATARI released the prototype to see if anyone would play it. Millions did, first in arcades and then at home.
Fifty years later, Al joined Jeri Ellsworth, founder and CEO of Tilt Five, and Giselle Muriel, a 2023 Game Academy graduate now in her senior year studying computer science at Barnard College, for the webinar, From PONG and Atari to Today’s Generation of Game Creators. The conversation spanned three generations of game creators, from PONG in 1972, to the technology being built right now, to a student who learned to code by making games.
From Gardens to Game Levels: An Endless Summer of World-Building
This summer, a garden in Manhattan became a video game, students in the Bronx built entire worlds from scratch, and hundreds more joined in from across the country! Beyond Urban Arts’ usual Game Academy programs, our middle and high schools students plugged into game design through two Summer Rising residencies, two Bronx workshops, and our national StoryQuest Camp, using open-source tools from Endless Studios’ Threadbare.
Summer Rising is New York City’s free summer program for public school students, combining academic support with hands-on enrichment. At MS297 in Manhattan, Urban Arts teacher Caroline Turret guided roughly 100 rising 6th-8th graders through a summer exploring St. Luke’s, a nearby public garden. Through Threadbare: Explore, each class built its own platformer level in Godot themed around the garden, dodging cars, flies, and bees through city streets. At 08X371, a Summer Rising site in the Bronx, Urban Arts teacher Dario Bolivar led 65 sixth graders through the full game-making process: brainstorming, art, animation, music, storytelling, and marketing.
Testimonial Video by Dario: Watch here
We also ran two workshops with Fordham University’s Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP), supporting 40 Bronx middle and high schoolers on the path to college. Taught by Caroline alongside Urban Arts alum Paola Soto, students built character animations for a 2D platformer, including one who created a full set of assets for a squirrel collecting acorns. A parent wrote that their son “couldn’t stop talking about today” as the experience broadened students’ sense of future paths in STEM.
Rounding out the summer, StoryQuest Camp — an online game design “sprint” with students joining virtually from across the country — brought together 119 students across four cohorts, taught by Urban Arts alumni MG Irvine and Richard Nguyen. Students built ambitious final levels in Explore: Godot, from dash mechanics and gravity flips to grapple hooks and full boss fights. As MG put it, “it was really cool seeing who was interested in narrative, or art, or coding, and seeing how they all tackled different problems in their own way.”
Built with Endless, brought to life by our students.
From PONG to the Metaverse: Urban Arts and Tilt Five Bring Together Gaming’s Pioneers and Its Next Builders
Back-to-school webinar connects the origins of video games with the skills and career pathways available to students creating games today
As students head back to school this fall, national non-profit Urban Arts and independent studio Tilt Five are highlighting something that captures the attention of millions of young people: video games. But this webinar is about more than playing games. It is about what students can learn by creating them, and how game design can open doors to careers in computer science, engineering, art, design, and creative technology.
On September 10, Urban Arts and Tilt Five will host “From Pong and Atari to Today’s Generation of Game Creators 👾,” bringing together two generations of game creators: Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer who created the original PONG, and an Urban Arts graduate who designs, builds, and teaches games.
For teachers and schools, the webinar will provide a look at how game design can engage students in computer science while connecting classroom learning to real-world careers. For students, it will offer a chance to hear how one of the earliest commercial video games was created, see projects from Urban Arts alumni, and learn what it takes to turn an idea into something people can actually play.
From Shortcut to Power Tool: Reflections on Our First Founders Lab
Founders Lab, an AI-first startup accelerator built for technically skilled high school seniors who are ready to build, launched this August. Founder’s Lab is an accelerator where high school students from under-resourced NYC communities form startup teams and use AI tools across every stage—market research, prototyping, code scaffolding, go-to-market—to build a live, investor-ready product. No idea-to-deck simulation: real Demo Day, real judges from the venture community, real money for the winning team.
Access That Changes Everything: Inside Urban Arts’ 3rd Annual College Forum
For students from low-income communities, the biggest barrier to college often isn’t ambition, it’s access. Last Friday, Urban Arts hosted its 3rd Annual College Forum at PwC in midtown, free through our College Access Program, ensuring our students enjoy direct access to both higher education leaders and college representatives.
Director of Post-Secondary Success Joelle Blackstock hosted and organized an hour-long panel featuring two industry leaders committed to expanding pathways for all students, with Urban Arts alum and ambassador Faiza Mohammed serving as moderator:
Dr. Charles J. Gibbs, Ed.D., President of Metropolitan College of New York
Sabrina Avila, Senior Manager of the STEM Research Academy at CUNY K16 Initiatives & Adult Pathways
Students and parents called the conversation “inspiring,” “encouraging,” “motivating,” and “very interesting.”
Esports Brings Students In. Game Design Takes Them Further.
This June, Urban Arts and NASEF co-hosted a webinar on esports, game design, and why schools should think about the connection between the two. Participants shared ways esports can help bring students into school communities and how game design can take them further.
Urban Arts is the national nonprofit that teaches digital game design as a pathway to college and career, offering programs to open doors in STEM and the arts. NASEF, the Network of Academic and Scholastic Esports Federation, is a nonprofit and global network that uses esports for competition, learning, career exploration, and skill development.
College Fellows: Inaugural Year for a Game-changing Program
Urban Arts teaches video game design as a pathway to college and career. Plus, we offer a free College Access program, boosting futures in STEM and the arts. Our pilot College Fellows program hired five alumni as advisors, providing paid positions with pre-professional training, a schedule that works for them, and a resume building block.
For young people, the most authentic guides are those who have just walked the walk, which is why we invest in our alumni with paid, purpose-driven opportunities to support the next generation. Through the College Fellows program, current college students bring their real-world experience, empathy, and hard-earned knowledge back to current high school seniors, offering weekly near-peer mentorship across applications, essays, financial aid, and everything in between. It works. 100% of Urban Arts seniors are accepted to college and they’ve earned $71M in scholarships since 2020.
Within the 31 students served in the Fellows program, they earned $8.4M in aid.
20 Years of the Nagler Scholar
Twenty years ago, Urban Arts Board Member Niclas Nagler and his family created The Nagler Scholarship to enable high school students from low-income communities to define their future. Each year, one winning scholar is awarded $60,000 to pursue their dreams. We are proud to celebrate 20 Years of the Nagler Scholar and this life-changing initiative, made possible by the generosity of the Nagler family.
Nagler scholars are artists, computer wizards, designers, teachers, entrepreneurs, and global changemakers. They exemplify leadership in their schools, a demonstrable focus and vision for their post-secondary careers, and a strong desire to use their talents and skills to impact the community.