Community Collaborations and Partnerships
MTC Learning & Community Engagement invests in the power of art as a bridge to connection. Rooted in our core values and commitment to increase broad and equitable access to theatre, we are dedicated to collaborating with an array of community-based organizations in New York City and the surrounding area. We are particularly invested in cultivating community alongside individuals who are seeking increased engagement with our city’s cultural life and its expansive possibilities but may have limited access or participatory barriers to the art form.
It is our goal to center and enrich the support networks already established by partner organizations. In developing authentic and continuously deepening partnerships, we prioritize active listening, attentive curiosity, and building sustained trust through thoughtful reflection and response. With our current partners and their community members, MTC Learning & Community Engagement has collaborated on Broadway and Off-Broadway theatre-going experiences, preparatory workshops centered on MTC productions, playwriting residencies with culminating readings, and career and skills development opportunities.
In the 2024-25 season, we are grateful to have connected with 482 artists, individuals, and collaborators across our partner organizations. We are proud that our total number of participants has increased five-fold since we established our community partnerships portfolio in 2021, and that our network of partners continues to grow!
In addition to the core partners listed below, in the 2025-2026 season we have collaborated with Center for Justice Innovation, The David Prize, Getting Out and Staying Out, and the YA-YA Network.
Please reach out to us if you are interested in exploring a potential partnership. Our email address is ed@mtc-nyc.org.
Our Community Partners
Since 1963, A Better Chance has been the preeminent resource for identifying, recruiting and developing leaders among historically underserved young people throughout the United States. The oldest and only national organization of its kind, A Better Chance selects, prepares, places and supports high-performing middle and high school students in some of the most rigorous and prestigious independent day schools, boarding schools, and public schools in the country. 20,000 Alumni and their families have benefitted from the A Better Chance experience.
Learn more about A Better Chance by visiting: https://www.abetterchance.org/
Developing Artists is a NYC nonprofit organization that challenges teens to combine rigorous performing arts training with an ensemble-based philosophy to create original work that inspires social change. We provide tuition-free, high-quality performing arts education to young people (ages 12–19) from historically underrepresented communities, helping to cultivate the next generation of New York City artists. Since 1999, we have empowered students to develop their artistic voices, build confidence, and create original theater that confronts the social issues shaping their lives and communities. Through intensive training, mentorship, mental health support, and performance opportunities, our students learn to use storytelling as a form of advocacy — creating work that pushes boundaries and challenges the status quo.
Learn more about Developing Artists by visiting: https://www.developingartists.org/
The Door’s mission is to empower young people to reach their potential by providing comprehensive youth development services in a diverse and caring environment. Each year, The Door sees young people from all over New York City, with a wide range of services including reproductive health care and education, mental health counseling and crisis assistance, legal assistance, GED/HSE classes, tutoring and homework help, college preparation services, career development, job training and placement, supportive housing, and recreational activities, arts, and nutritious meals – all for free, completely confidentially, all under one roof.
Learn more about The Door: https://www.door.org
The Fortune Society’s mission is to support successful reentry from incarceration and promote alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities. To address the complex and overlapping needs of our participants, The Fortune Society employs a “one-stop-shop” model of service provision to meet participants’ often overlapping needs. Fortune offers a comprehensive array of coordinated, in-house social services to over 9,000 people in a typical year via five primary NYC-area locations.
Learn more about The Fortune Society: https://www.fortunesociety.org
The Fordham Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP) is a pre-collegiate dropout prevention program based at Fordham University since 1989 that offers free year-round academic support, college and career prep, cultural enrichment, counseling, and workshops to local Bronx students from the 6th to 12th grade. The Fordham LPP program (which operates under Fordham’s Graduate School of Education) is part of the New York State Education Department grant-funded LPP network of 51 colleges and universities statewide. On average, Fordham LPP annually services 360 students from neighboring partner schools / organizations and recruits approximately 100 Fordham undergrad volunteers to engage with our youth as tutors, college mentors, and workshop facilitators in addition collaborates with Fordham University departments as well as community vendors to provide resources to the LPP students.
Learn more about LPP Fordham by visiting: https://www.fordham.edu/graduate-school-of-education/academics/partnerships-and-projects/liberty-partnerships-program/
Partnership with Children’s mission is to strengthen the emotional, social, and cognitive skills of children in New York City so they can succeed in school, society, and life. PWC provides expert mental health services and support for children’s emotional well-being, serving some 30,000 students annually in schools across the five boroughs. The Arts in Education Department at Partnership with Children works to infuse healing arts into Partnerships’ work with children across New York City by providing high-quality, culturally responsive, community-based arts instruction to foster the holistic development of children in our schools.
MTC is a host site for Partnership with Children’s Career Development Program which provides high school seniors with career readiness training and internships in creative industries across New York City.
Learn more about Partnership with Children: https://partnershipwithchildren.org/
Recess partners with artists, youth, writers, and their chosen publics to create transformative cultural experiences. Our programs welcome radical thinkers to imagine and shape networks of resilience and safety. By challenging dominant narratives and activating new forms of creative production, Recess defines and advances the possibilities of contemporary art.
Founded in 2016, Assembly offers system-impacted young people aged 18-26 an inroad to art and connections to working artists, while serving as an alternative to incarceration and its intersecting systems of oppression. The curriculum empowers young people to take charge of their own life story and envision a future through art. The program diverts both misdemeanor and felony charges and in 2020 expanded to include a peer-to-peer referral model, allowing us to broaden our reach.
Learn more about Recess and Assembly at: https://www.recessart.org/programs/3-assembly
SNLP empowers young women and gender-expansive youth of color through transformative leadership development, community building, social justice education, and post-secondary readiness support. Founded in 2001, SNLP was created to challenge systems that exclude youth from leadership and to provide affirming, high-quality programs rooted in intersectional feminist values. Serving over 600 participants annually across New York City and Newark, NJ, SNLP offers free programs year-round, including summer programs, after-school programs and partnerships with schools and community organizations. Our work fosters confidence, critical thinking, and collective power—ensuring young people not only imagine just futures, but lead efforts to create them.
Learn more about Sadie Nash Leadership Project by visiting: https://www.sadienash.org/
The TEAK Fellowship believes that motivation and potential, not economic circumstances, should determine a student’s future. TEAK unlocks access to an outstanding education and transformative experiences for exceptional NYC students, who use these opportunities to change their lives and the world around them. Established in 1998, TEAK’s free 10-year program begins in sixth grade and continues through college graduation. Through intensive after school and summer classes, TEAK prepares middle school students to get into the nation’s most selective high schools and colleges. TEAK’s robust support system ensures that students thrive in their independent (day and boarding) high schools and graduate from college, ready to pursue their professional goals and positively impact the world. By transforming the life of each student, TEAK lifts communities and impacts the world at large.
Learn more about TEAK Fellowship: https://www.teakfellowship.org
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