Resident artists included Guillermo Gomez Pena, Roberto Sifuentes, lê thi diem thúy, Chitra Divakaruni, Laurie Carlos, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Dawn Akemi Saito, Coatlicue Colorado/the Colorado Sisters, Marlies Yearby, Sekou Sundiata, Alberto "Beto" Araiza, Aisha Rahman, Suheir Hammad, Rha Goddess, Rokafella, Kwikstep, D'Lo, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Alice Tuan, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, and Steven Sapp.
Over a two-week period, youth participated in a series of daily workshops led by artists that include playwrighting, poetry, breakdancing, drumming, beatboxing, lyricism, singing, song writing, stepping, and visual art.
Artist participants included Universes, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Willie Perdomo, Regie Cabico, Rokafella and Kwikstep, Dipankar Mukherjee, Baba Israel, Rha Goddess, Kamilah Forbes, Magdalena Gomez, Alice Tuan, and Garland Farwell.
In July 2009, the Fine Arts Center suspended New WORLD Theater's operations, citing economic challenges, although new grants were in place from the Nathan Cummings, Ford, and Surdna Foundations.
the major outcome is a two-year project between UMass Fine Arts Center and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University (HEMI) that will: (1) historically preserve and make publicly accessible a curated selection of significant videos from NWT through the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL); (2) digitize images, programs, ephemera, and other relevant materials to be permanently available online in a trilingual NWT Online Profile on HI's website.