New York, NY—Urban Arts, a STEAM nonprofit serving underrepresented students nationally, is expanding into middle schools with Creative Coders, a rigorous curriculum in partnership with Minecraft Education. Supported by a highly competitive $4M Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Urban Arts will partner with 70+ schools and 3,450 students over the next four years, encouraging confidence—and futures—in STEM/STEAM for diverse students from low-income communities.

Creative Coders adapts Urban Arts’ highly successful high school computer science (CS) curriculum to a middle school setting. “Yes, we teach our students to make video games,” says Philip Courtney, CEO of Urban Arts. “Why? Because it’s super-fun, and students are more likely to persist while they learn challenging tech if they get to create a game at the end.” Urban Arts teaches digital game development as a pathway to college and career for young people of color, girls, LGBTQ youth and others underrepresented within STEM and STEAM

Urban Arts’s unique unplugged, arts-based activities are paired with engaging game-based learning experiences in Minecraft Education, leveraging the familiar world of Minecraft and best-selling game in history to teach introductory computer science (CS) in middle schools.

Creative Coders students will design and program their original video games in Minecraft Education as they learn programming basics and skills aligned with CSTA Standards. Laylah Bulman, Senior Program Manager and Executive Producer at Minecraft Education, says, “Minecraft Education is proud to be the cornerstone of the Creative Coders initiative. By harnessing the immersive power of Minecraft, we’re not just engaging students in coding through video game design, we’re also inspiring them to imagine, design and create their futures. This program empowers teachers and students, fostering a generation of problem solvers equipped with the skills to navigate and shape the digital world.”

Creative Coders is accessible to all students and educators licensed to use Minecraft Education. Minecraft Education is included in most Microsoft 365 software subscriptions for schools. Any school organizations that own these subscriptions have access to Minecraft Education at no additional charge. “This provides an unprecedented opportunity for Urban Arts to reach a huge market. For good,” says Philip.

A recent study stressed the importance of expanding CS instruction to middle schoolers before traditionally underserved populations begin to self-select out. Yet, of 17 states surveyed, only 3.9% of middle school students had enrolled in foundational computer science. Creative Coders offers an engaging, effective, affordable and scalable path forward for middle school CS programs.

This is Urban Arts’s third EIR grant from the US DOE. Urban Arts is changing the future, using arts and tech education as a vehicle for equity. Teaching historically-underrepresented students digital game development allows them to become creatively and technically confident while they acquire critical career skills like collaboration, project management and leadership. Through this programming, they get a front row seat to the future economy.

Urban Arts, the nation’s premier arts and tech nonprofit, has addressed the needs of low-income communities since 1992. Microsoft enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Based in Redmond, Washington, its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

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For more information, please contact:
Jenifer Walter, Director of Marketing and Communications, Urban Arts, jen@urbanarts.org
Holly Amber Smith, Global Communications Manager, Minecraft Education, hollysmith@microsoft.com
Interview access with students, teachers, Urban Arts and Minecraft Education leadership available.

THEMES / TIMELINESS
DEI / Especially in the wake of the affirmative action collapse.
Education access and opportunity / Especially in the post-COVID lag.
Video games in the classroom / Video games generate $300B a year. Who gets to be part of that economy?
Serving public school teachers / Especially as retention craters.
Computer Science / Expensive, critical and increasingly state-mandated. Who gets served?
Diversity in tech / Decades of talk, and yet deployment and leadership remain overwhelmingly white.
Tech equity / Level the digital playing field.
Gaming Industry / What do creators of color make given the training and the tools?

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