Martin Urbach (he/him)

Founder & Director of Artivist Education

Drummer / Percussionist Martin (pronounced mar-TEEN) Urbach is a Latine Immigrant, educator, activist and youth organizer. His work in the classroom is based on facilitating brave spaces for young folks to fall in love with music and to promote social justice through music making in their community.

He holds a BA in jazz performance from the University of New Orleans, a MA in jazz arts from the Manhattan School of Music, an Advanced Certificate in Music Education from Brooklyn College and is currently a Doctoral candidate in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Martin has been an educator in New York City since 2006. He has taught well over ten thousand children; from pre kindergarten to doctoral students.

Martin lives in Brooklyn, NY, is obsessed with the beach, boogie coffee, beard oils and ramen shops!

For fun, he plays drums and percussion with bands of friends, cooks improvisational dinners and reads critical pedagogy texts!

Story Time!

The most important and defining lessons I have learned in my life have happened in my classroom. The idea of starting an arts-based youth development program for youth based on restorative practices was born because of one of those defining moments ten years ago while teaching a Saturday morning drumming ensemble class at a public school in the Upper West Side. One day, a Black, Muslim teenager, showed up late to class, visibly shaken, and immediately put his head down. This same young man, who had been excited in previous weeks, appeared to have had his light stolen by the NYPD when they Stopped & Frisked him in front of his peers on his way to school. Once he shared with the class that at the age of 14, he had more Stop-and-Frisk experiences than birthdays, our class was collectively transformed. In the spirit of a restorative justice circle, students and I took turns affirming him, listening to him, offering support. As a class, we decided to create an original musical song entitled “Stop Stop & Frisk” as a way to channel hurt into healing through both music and restorative justice circle initiatives. The seeds for The Circle Keepers and every other educational program I have engendered were born from such transformative experiences in my classroom, harnessing the power of arts based and restorative justice based education to teach young people how to make sense of and change the world for better.

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