Urban Arts Workshop–New York is composed of lectures, presentations, screenings, readings, discussions, and visits from painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers, designers, architects, planners, restaurateurs, curators and critics designed to expose students to the key concepts and fundamental theories of urban studies, public art and the urban-inspired works of many great artists and writers based in New York City and around the world. Outside of class time, students will do readings, conduct research, watch movies, post reactions and do various assignments that engage the core course subject matter and themes. Each class will explore another form of urban art, including discussions about and encounters with graffiti, street photography, sculpture, installation art, architecture, music, dance, performance, theater, fashion, urban sound projects, large-scale projections, poetry, essays and short stories with an aim to understand how such art forms came into being and how they express a distinctly urban message to the inhabitants and visitors of New York City and cities across the planet. The instructor seeks to combine the critical and theoretical with the experiential and personal in order to lead students to a deeper and more fruitful relationship with cities, the arts and themselves. Further exploration will be conducted into the phenomenon of connectivity in the 21st century city providing a deeper perspective on globalism, the networked environment, and emerging technology’s role in the future of art, culture and urban living. Field trips may include: The Whitney, The High Line and Hudson Yards, Tiny Island, MoMA, Guggenheim, PS1, Museum of the City of New York, The New Museum, Transit Museum, Noguchi Museum, Governors Island and others based upon availability. Students will need a MetroCard for traveling around the city as well as approximately $50.00 to cover meals and museum tickets (this price varies depending on course itinerary).
Category Archives: Spring 2027
Creative Fundraising (OART-UT 1093)
This course will cover both traditional and non-traditional financing and fundraising in the worlds of entertainment and the arts. Although our focus will be on the film world (with an emphasis on feature films), we will take occasional forays into the worlds of television, theatre, and music. We will also look at product financing. The goal of the course is to provide students with a framework for understanding the dynamics (as well as the specific routes) to raising funds for artistic endeavors. Many entertainment projects require significant capital before they can be realized. The negotiation and structuring of these deals may be a humbling experience, fraught with compromises that affect creative control over the final product. Producers need knowledge of financing tools and structures, an understanding of current economics driving the business, and skills in understanding new technologies and trends in funding. At its core, the course will help students develop a general understanding of fundraising and financing in the world of entertainment and refine the skills necessary to develop proposals that allow them to one day realize a creative vision.
Producing Essentials (OART-UT 1006)
The role of the creative producer in the entertainment industry is integral to bringing a project to fruition. This introductory course covers both the creative and physical production time-line and provides students with an understanding of the producer’s role through a semester-long team-based pitch project, which culminates in written and verbal pitch presentations. Students are encouraged to work on a project that best suits their area of interest: feature film, episodic/streaming, theatre, performance, podcasts, VR/AR or individualized multi-media. The course focuses on the dynamics of producing, including producer skill sets, tasks and responsibilities necessary to effectively and efficiently develop a project.
Design Fundamentals (IMNY-UT 261)
This class aims to provide students with the critical thinking and practical skills to explore and communicate ideas visually. This foundational course will introduce the fundamental principles of design including typography, color, composition, branding and environmental design, and offer hands-on application of those principles through both in-class exercises and weekly assignments. The structure of the class is part lecture and learning of concepts, but also very hands-on with a weekly workshop studio session (the weekend class). We will use Adobe software and students can expect to spend $150 on consumable art supplies which they will use to craft their design projects.
Internship (IMNY-UT 901)
The IMA Internship course (IMNY‑UT 901) is a credit-bearing academic course that integrates supervised work experience with structured reflection, through an internship secured independently by the student. Participants engage in experiential learning that applies the concepts, observations, and principles from their coursework to a professional setting. The academic component includes written reflections, one-on-one advisor meetings, group discussions, and an evaluation from the student’s workplace supervisor. Successful completion of both the internship and academic assignments is required to earn credit, and the course appears on the transcript as an Internship. Credits count toward electives.
Communications Lab (IMNY-UT 102)
An introductory course designed to provide students with hands-on experience using various technologies including time based media, video production, digital imaging, audio, video and animation. The forms and uses of new communications technologies are explored in a laboratory context of experimentation and discussion. The technologies are examined as tools that can be employed in a variety of situations and experiences. Principles of interpersonal communications, media theory, and human factors are introduced. Weekly assignments, team and independent projects, and project reports are required.
Class #
Section #
Meets
Class #: 13708
Section #: 001
Meets: T 9a-12p
Class #: 13709
Section #: 002
Meets: R 3:40-6:40p
Class #: 13710
Section #: 003
Meets: W 12:20-3:20p
Class #: 13711
Section #: 004
Meets: R 3:40-6:40p
Class #: 13712
Section #: 005
Meets: W 9a-12p
Class #: 22785
Section #: 006
Meets: R 9a-12p
Understanding Story (OART-UT 568)
Understanding Story is a class composed of lectures, discussions, screenings, readings, critical and creative writing, group critiques and presentations. The course is designed to expose the student to the fundamental principles of storytelling across a spectrum of mediums, including the written story, playwriting, film, poetry, dance, games, photography, fine art and music. How do all these different art forms tell stories? How can the student apply what is learned to their own creative work? History and theory of story will be studied and used to inspire personal and creative work in order to better understand how story can most successfully be expressed in different mediums and reach its audience.
Intro to Digital Tools (OART-UT 823)
This course will explore the three main Adobe imaging products – Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Structured as a dynamic exploration of design ideas and the adobe landscape, we’ll look at and explore the traditional design tools and methods along with many of the changes and enhancements AI is bringing to the digital design toolkit. Through a series of short exercises we will look at graphic design and layout using Illustrator and InDesign adding the image enhancement techniques in Photoshop. In the short exercises we’ll look at basic design concepts using typography, shapes and images to create layouts that are clear, simple and intuitive. More complex exercises will challenge your abilities to use images and typography to best express your goals in a variety of formats. You’ll also complete a small project of your own for the end of the class. Class time will be divided between work in class sessions, lectures, and feedback/critique sessions. This course is not intended to completely cover the software but will give you an understanding of which digital tool will best deliver your fresh ideas to the page. The majority of the class focuses on creating images, logos, books and magazines, but we cover the options of converting for screen output. We’ll incorporate some Adobe apps to augment the desktop and tablet applications. Depending on schedules, we will visit a gallery or museum during the semester. Students should have access to the Adobe Creative Suite through the NYU license.
Cell Phone Cinema (OART-UT 566)
Hollywood in your palm. That is what this combination of lectures, screenings, demonstrations and practical production workshop will offer to the students in this course. There will be several professional guests making presentations and Q&A sessions from the mobile phone filmmaking industry. In addition to the historical and critical overview of the emergence and exponential growth of global cell phone cinema, students will shoot all footage on cell phones and download them for computerized editing. The final project will be under three minute shorts. Projects will include all genres of film and television: news, mini-documentaries, animation, music videos and narrative shorts. Completed student projects will be suitable to be posted on the Internet and entered into domestic and international mobile phone film festivals. For example, two minute long improvisations of Bollywood Style Music Videos shot on Cell Phones by the students have been projected at the Tribeca Cinemas as part of the New York Indian Film Festival. It is suggested but not compulsory that students bring to the class a cell phone capable of recording video.
New Video Dimensions (OART-UT 569)
The introduction of the video camera into the artist’s studio pushed the boundaries of time-based media beyond its traditional use in cinema and television production to embody technology and narrative as an intimate material process. This video course will explore the various dimensions of video art, including its physical sculptural qualities, its use as a tool for poetic and conceptual gestures, performative approaches, and its role as a spatial dimension in video objects and installations. Video’s ability to collapse an art object through its process, utilizing experimental documentary approaches and research-based methods, enables unique collaborations between artists and disciplines to invent formats such as dance-on-film, poetic essay records, personal and collective social experiments, remote documentary performances, and hybrid forms of audience interaction. Through thematic case studies and assignments, students will develop and produce several video works in the semester, providing them with the art historical context, technical skills, and conceptual framework necessary for creating and installing time-based video art. The course will culminate in a gallery special video installation, emphasizing the audience’s interaction with time-based media within the visual art context of galleries, museums, and site-specific presentations.