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.
Urban Arts’ Class of 2026 Achieves 100% College Acceptance Rate, Bringing Cumulative Scholarship Total to $71 Million Since 2020
A group of teenagers from low-income communities across New York City has earned $25 million in college scholarships this year, not through a traditional academic pipeline, but through video games.
These students are not outliers. Urban Arts, the national nonprofit that teaches video game design as a pathway to college and career, announced that its Class of 2026 has achieved a 100% college acceptance rate. This year’s results bring Urban Arts’ cumulative scholarship total to more than $71 million. All instruction and college access services are provided free of charge to students and their families.
At the Urban Arts Game Academy, students build original games, creating narrative, music, animation; pitch their work to industry professionals for real-world feedback, learning entrepreneurship, iteration, teamwork; and graduate with portfolios, credentials, and career networks that most of their peers, at any income level, don’t have.
Impact Report: ALUMNI 2026. We hire our most powerful advocates.
WHY GAME DESIGN?
At Urban Arts, students don’t just play games—they create them. As the nation’s premier nonprofit teaching video game design, we prepare young people for college and career by blending coding, 3D modeling, animation, and storytelling with the essential workforce skills of collaboration, leadership, and design-thinking. Students learn to build original games from the ground up, pitch their ideas, and develop portfolios that colleges and employers notice.
Game design fuels creativity while building critical problem-solving and technical expertise for a $300B industry and beyond. The results speak for themselves: Urban Arts students have earned over $46M in scholarships and launched careers at Lucasfilm, Unity, Amazon, Salesforce, and more. With Urban Arts, creativity isn’t just encouraged—it’s the pathway to the future.
The 2025 Yearbook is Here!
Get impressed! Packed with innovative programming, stories of impact, and intrepid youth.
Urban Arts Investigates AI and the Future of STEAM Education at Accelerator 2025
Redefining Learning in the Age of Automation NEW YORK, NY (October 2025) — While the headlines wonder if AI will replace skills like coding, Urban Arts knows what makes students irreplaceable: creativity and critical thinking. The national nonprofit—renowned for teaching video game design as a pathway to college and career—hosted their AI Accelerator from September […]
“The Vanishing Enigma” Honored in Congressional App Challenge
NEW YORK, NY (2025) — Urban Arts, a New York City-based nonprofit that teaches digital game design as a pathway to college and wide-ranging careers, is proud to announce that The Vanishing Enigma created by Studio Capstone team “The AristoRats” has won the 2024 Congressional App Challenge for New York’s Eighth District, hosted by Representative […]
Urban Arts to Honor Josh Feldman with NBCUniversal at 2025 Color Ball
Dear Life of the Party,
At Urban Arts’ Color Ball on April 10th, five extraordinary young people took the stage—and owned it. Their powerful stories and remarkable achievements received a rousing response from a room filled with 400 guests. It was a night that celebrated not only their success, but the limitless potential of every Urban Arts student.
Because of you—our incredible supporters, champions, and dance-floor legends—Color Ball 2025 raised $800k in a single night! That’s right, you made it rain (philanthropically speaking), and our Urban Arts students are the real winners! Daniel Glenn-Schultz, our inspiring Nagler Scholar, deserves a standing ovation. His story reminds us why we do this work—because talent deserves opportunity, and every student deserves a chance to create their future.
“Imagine a little boy standing at Parkchester Subway station. I’m staring at a vast subway map. I’m following the multi-colored lines. As I stare at that map, I feel I can go anywhere! Urban Arts has changed my life. And now this scholarship will change my life yet again.”
—Daniel Glenn-Schultz, 2025 Nagler Scholar
A huge thank you to our honoree, NBCUniversal’s Josh Feldman, for his leadership and to NBCUniversal for your unwavering partnership. We couldn’t ask for better collaborators in this mission to fuel access and opportunity.
And let’s talk about Louis Cato and his band, who absolutely rocked the house (and may or may not have caused some sore feet this morning). Louis brought the perfect energy to cap off an unforgettable evening!To each and every one of you in the room and who raised your hand or bid wildly on auction items—THANK YOU! Your generosity ensures that Urban Arts students can dream big, create freely, and achieve their full potential.Missed the event but still want to make an impact? There’s still time to support our students and get involved! With deep gratitude, we’re heading into the future energized and inspired. Thank you for being part of this unforgettable night and the Urban Arts journey.
Highlights from the night:
• 100% college acceptance rate,
• $32M in college scholarships to date,
• $800K raised,
• 3 conga lines on the dance floor,
• a sea of sequins, blinding amounts of neon, plus stripes, florals, checks, comic-book print, marabou cuffs, animal prints, plaids, metallics, rhinestones, paisley—
• and one red cape!
There’s No Computer Science Without Creativity: Game Development as a Pathway to STEM Success
Dr. Amy Patterson of Urban Arts and Ellen Flaherty of Unity amplify the transformative impact of Computer Science (CS) through game development in a CSEdWeek OpEd (December 9-13, 2024). This piece spotlights how game design initiatives are changing the trajectory for K-12 students nationwide. Together, they showcase real student journeys—from high school to college to […]
(FREE) SUMMER CAMP ⛺️: Hot Games, Cool Kids
During the 6 weeks of our Summer Camp intensive, 100+ students learned coding, Unity engine, and other digital tools to write, make music and art, and create games. 10 Alumni Teaching Assistants worked with us this summer—folks who went through Urban Arts programming and who have been hired back to teach the next generation while […]
ARCADE 2024 🙌🏾 SMASH SUCCESS
New York, NY, June 15—Totally new games to play, dedicated gamers in supportive community, plus industry pros leaning *IN*—#ARCADE 2024 marks another smash success. Over 100 students jammed the Urban Arts Learning Lab to 🍕🍪🍿, to play, to celebrate their work, and to cheer the Studio Teams on as they pitched their year-long efforts to […]