Urban Word NYC’s award-winning programs utilize the written and spoken word to develop critical thinking skills and leadership in youth from across New York City. With our main site, the Writer’s Block in Manhattan, and a satellite site in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Urban Word NYC offers safe spaces for young writers, leaders, scholars and activists to find community, inspiration and support. Our FREE after school wordshops for teens happen four days per week in the fall, winter and spring, along with our Summer Institute for Social Justice & Applied Poetics.

Led by two adult mentors and one youth mentor, wordshops are student-centered environments where young writers can experiment, explore, and eventually explode their work in performance. Our wordshops are designed to encourage brave and creative expression in the literary arts, spoken word, hip-hop and performance. In 12 sessions, youth explore the written and oral traditions of poetry, rap and hip-hop forms, song lyrics, writing for political/social change, and more. Every wordshop is a place to get feedback and new ideas, and provides a real, diverse, and supportive community of young writer/performers.

Urban Word NYC is a community committed to reciprocal teaching and learning. Every workshop series is closely observed and assessed to ensure success. Mentors participate in bi-annual trainings and bi-monthly mentor meetings to discuss the progress of our students. They contribute teaching journals and self-evaluations at the end of each term.

Urban Word NYC is a community committed to youth leadership. Each year, a group of 10 to 15 committed youth poets act in service of their peers as part of our youth board, Word Wide. They envision, advise, and implement projects that reach out to other youth around the city. Members visit public schools, community centers, poetry festivals, homeless shelters, train stations, and juvenile detention facilities. There they kick poems, run writing exercises, promote Urban Word NYC’s free resources and prove to adults and youth alike that spoken word poetry has artistic and educative value — and is anything but boring.

See our “Calendar” section for a complete list of free workshops that we are currently offering. Check the “Urban Word at Your Site” section to see how we can bring these dynamic workshops to your site.