New Urban Arts, a city-based after-school program for high school students, is a busy place in the afternoon.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — New Urban Arts, the funky after-school arts studio for city teenagers, has a new director: Jason Yoon, a program alumnus and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design.

Yoon, who starts his new job Feb. 4, is director of finance and operations at Dreamyard Project, a school-based arts program in New York City. He will replace Tyler Denmead, the former Brown University student who founded New Urban Arts 10 years ago. Denmead headed to England this summer, where he is enrolled in a postgraduate program in arts, culture and education at the University of Cambridge.

Yoon was studying painting and art history at RISD when a friend, Tamara Kaplan, told him about a gutsy new arts program for high school students in the West End. Kaplan, who is acting director of New Urban Arts, persuaded Yoon, then a college senior, to become an artist-mentor. For the rest of the year, Yoon met twice a week with a small group of city teenagers, and together, they explored painting, drawing and sculpture.

The experience, Yoon said, was nothing short of transformational.

“We got on this path of learning together,” Yoon said in a telephone interview. When his class expressed an interest in sculpture, Yoon was in uncharted territory, but he scrounged around, found the right materials, and, working with his students, created sculptured lamps.

“It was nice for me to push myself out of my comfort zone,” he said. “That’s the power of this place. It’s a mutual learning environment.”

After graduating from RISD, Yoon moved back to New York City, where he landed an internship at the Brooklyn Museum, an apprenticeship that allowed him to teach as well as develop arts programs with local schools.

Although he didn’t ultimately want to become a classroom teacher, Yoon knew that the experience would be invaluable, giving him a real-world feel for the public schools during a time of upheaval and change. And so he took a part-time job teaching art at a start-up charter elementary school.

“It was an incredible experience,” he said. “We had to manage it all — facilities, security, professional development — we were learning on the fly.”

A couple of years later, he entered a master’s degree program in public administration at New York University. While in graduate school, Yoon began handling fund-raising and development activities for the charter school, which led to the opening of the school’s first library.

During his last semester at NYU, Yoon worked as an intern for the Dreamyard Project, which led to a fulltime job as a development associate. In June 2006, Yoon was promoted to his current role as director of finance.

Yoon heard about the opening at New Urban Arts from Denmead, who thought he’d be a strong candidate for the director’s job.

“I was a little hesitant,” Yoon said. “I’d only had a limited amount of fundraising experience at the time. In the last six to eight months, I’ve grown a lot professionally. That put me in a good place as far as leading a nonprofit [agency].”

The first search resulted in a candidate who ultimately took a job across the country. The second search led to Yoon, who was selected as the new director two weeks ago.

“We were going for someone with a strong personality,” said Angelo Manioudakis, who led the search committee. “Jason had a great experience with New Urban Arts, and he’s got this great vision. For us, it was a perfect package.”

Yoon said that, “This is what I’ve been trying to do my entire life. My mission is to ensure that young people see themselves as creative, to make sure that they have the same opportunities that I had as a kid.”

When he arrives, Yoon said, the first thing he will do is listen to what the staff has to say about the organization’s future. In the meantime, he has already posed three over-arching questions: How can New Urban Arts support the creative development of its artist mentors? How can it identify the benefits to the larger community that arise when teenagers and artists work together? And finally, how does the organization grow?

There is no one “aha” moment that represented the turning in the road, the reason why Yoon decided on a career in arts education, rather than the fine arts. Maybe, it was the summer he spent working as a counselor at an arts camp for city youth, or the urban education class he took at Brown University. Perhaps, it was the time he spent doing a video project with a charter high school in Providence.

All he knows is that New Urban Arts feels like coming home.

“I have a real affection for the city and concern for the city.”

lborg@projo.com