Bowery Arts & Science, Ltd.

Bowery Arts and Science is a non-profit organization seeking to preserve and enhance the oral tradition of poetry via live readings, media documentation and creation, and to restore poetry to the center of our culture, as it is in oral cultures. Our mission includes a strong educational component, introducing all manner of poetries to students of all ages; the preservation of endangered languages via the valuation of the poetry of these cultures; and the infusion and integration of poetry with other arts and the daily life of the citizenry.

Taking advantage of New York's centrality of culture and media (both independent and mainstream), we protect the fragile ecosystem of world languages. Created as Washington Square Arts, Inc., in 1995, and renamed Bowery Arts and Science, Ltd., in 2004, we seek to preserve international oral traditions as well as provide a forum for emerging voices threatened with marginalization. We do this through performance, audio-visual documentation and the dissemination of that documentation through both new media and traditional channels.

Our dedication to the communities we serve is boundless: we work in partnership with local schools and higher-education institutions to develop the undiscovered voices hidden in our midst. From half-day workshops with high school students to West African oral tradition performance-courses to a semester abroad on the Bowery for MFA writing programs, all held at the Bowery Poetry Club, we offer a one-of-a-kind hands-on education in poetry. And via our collaborations with technology, we strive to heed poetry's traditions and evolutions: we believe the definition of a book may change, but as long as the word eternal exists, the poem is.