Usher's New Look and USC Thornton Launch Founding Fellows Program

The USC Thornton School of Music and Usher's New Look announced the launch of the New Look × USC Thornton Founding Fellows, a new year-long experiential learning fellowship connecting five USC Thornton undergraduate students with the people, environments and ideas shaping contemporary live entertainment.

Developed jointly by Usher's New Look and USC Thornton, the pilot fellowship brings together New Look's longstanding work in leadership development, workforce preparation, community impact and entertainment-industry access with Thornton's commitment to preparing students for a rapidly changing creative and professional landscape.

The New Look × USC Thornton Founding Fellows program is designed as a different model of experiential education. Rather than placing students within a single company or professional role, the same cohort moves across multiple parts of the live entertainment ecosystem over the course of an academic year: encountering artists and artist teams, touring and production, promoters and venues, technology and experience design, community organizations, executives and emerging professionals. Each New Look × USC Thornton Founding Fellow carries a personal question through those experiences and is asked not simply to gain access, but to observe, make connections and translate what they encounter into a deeper understanding of how the industry works and where they might contribute.

The model grew out of conversations around Usher's New Look's R&B Tour internship program, which gives emerging professionals hands-on experience within a major touring environment. Rather than replicate that internship, USC Thornton and New Look developed a complementary model for university students: a year-long fellowship that moves across the live entertainment ecosystem while creating opportunities for USC Fellows and New Look interns to learn from one another. The result brings together two different forms of experiential learning, and young people entering the industry through different educational and professional pathways.

'Students can study the music industry in a classroom, and they can learn enormously through internships, but we wanted to explore something different,' said Jason King, dean of the USC Thornton School of Music. 'What happens when students spend a year moving through different parts of the live entertainment ecosystem: learning from an artist manager one day, touring professionals another, executives and emerging professionals somewhere else—and are asked to connect what they see? This fellowship is about turning extraordinary access into education: teaching students to observe closely, ask better questions, understand how the pieces connect and begin to imagine where they might contribute themselves.'

The inaugural cohort consists of five USC Thornton undergraduate students selected through a competitive application process. Each New Look × USC Thornton Founding Fellow receives a stipend in recognition of their participation and commitment to the year-long program. The intentionally small cohort allows Fellows to participate in intimate conversations with artists, executives, touring professionals and emerging industry leaders while developing meaningful relationships with one another over the course of the year.

'Connecting the next generation across geographic, cultural and educational boundaries expands what they can imagine and build together,' says Shawn H. Wilson, President and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Detroit & co-founder of Usher's New Look. 'Bringing together USC Thornton undergraduate students and emerging professionals from Detroit and Atlanta creates shared experiences where everyone has something to teach and learn. Those relationships can become tomorrow's creative teams, businesses and partnerships, launching careers and powering the future of entertainment.'

The Fellowship launched in September with a leadership and orientation session with Wilson followed by the Fellows' first field immersion around The R&B Tour at SoFi Stadium. There, the USC Fellows encountered the professional ecosystem surrounding a stadium-scale touring production and learned alongside participants in New Look's R&B Tour internship program.

The experience established a central principle that will guide the year: access itself is not the educational objective. The goal is to teach students how to enter unfamiliar professional environments, understand the people and systems operating within them, ask informed questions and translate access into knowledge.

The Fellowship will continue with a two-day Los Angeles experience connecting New Look, USC Thornton and the live entertainment industry. Wilson will visit USC Thornton to engage with the Founding Fellows and members of the broader Thornton community. The following day, USC Fellows are expected to participate in a substantial immersion designed to introduce them to the interconnected creative, operational and business dimensions of live entertainment, potentially spanning touring and promotion, venues and production, ticketing, marketing and audience development, partnerships, artist relationships, business strategy and career pathways.

The Los Angeles experience is also being developed to include emerging professionals from Detroit and Atlanta connected to New Look and Boys & Girls Club workforce-development initiatives. By bringing together university students and young adults gaining applied industry experience through different pathways, the program is designed to create reciprocal learning rather than a traditional model in which expertise flows in only one direction.

In November, the USC Thornton Founding Fellows will travel to Detroit for an immersion connecting music history, talent development, technology and workforce development. Experiences are being developed around the Motown Museum, Michigan Central and Detroit Spark Lab, allowing Fellows to examine both the systems of artist development that helped make Motown one of the most influential institutions in American music and contemporary approaches to connecting young adults with technology, industry and professional opportunity.

The Fellowship will turn toward the future of live entertainment in early 2027 with a planned Las Vegas immersion centered on Metallica, Live Nation and Sphere. The experience is being developed as a real-world exploration of immersive entertainment, bringing students into conversation with the creative, technical, production, venue and business professionals behind large-scale live experiences, examining how sound, image, architecture, technology and performance increasingly operate as a single system.

Across the year, each New Look × USC Thornton Founding Fellow will pursue a personal question about the entertainment industry that connects the experiences. Those questions might explore artist management, touring, immersive technology, leadership, audience experience, community impact or where a student's particular talents might fit within the larger ecosystem. Rather than treating each encounter as a stand-alone experience, Fellows will be asked to make connections across the year and consider how their understanding changes as they encounter the industry from different vantage points.

The Fellowship will culminate in spring 2027 with individual student capstones asking each Fellow to reflect on one central question: 'What do I understand now that I did not understand when this Fellowship began and what am I going to do with that understanding?'

'Ultimately, we want students to leave with more than an impressive collection of experiences,' King said. 'We want them to understand how careers are built, how relationships and communities matter, how creative and business decisions intersect, and how many different people and disciplines are required to make extraordinary things happen. Most of all, we want them asking two questions: Where might I contribute? And who else might I help bring with me?'

The inaugural New Look × USC Thornton Founding Fellows program is supported by Usher's New Look, with resources directed toward student stipends, travel, experiential learning and individual capstone projects.

Beyond the experience of the inaugural cohort, the partnership will also serve as a pilot for USC Thornton as the School explores how touring, festivals, venues, immersive entertainment, artist management, production, audience experience and the business of live events might play a more intentional role in the future of music education. The program will allow Thornton and New Look to examine what students learn when academic study is connected over time to direct engagement with the people and environments where the work of live entertainment takes place.

About Usher's New Look

Founded in 1999, Usher's New Look equips young people ages 14-24 with skills, capital and access to careers in the entertainment trades. Through certifications, industry standard mentorship, and access to career pathways, Usher's New Look is building a pipeline that launches careers and powers the future of entertainment.

About USC Thornton School of Music

Founded in 1884, the USC Thornton School of Music is the oldest continuously operating arts institution in Los Angeles and one of the premier music schools in the world. Combining the rigor of a top conservatory with the expansive opportunities of a leading research university, USC Thornton prepares students to excel as performers, composers, scholars, producers, educators, industry leaders and innovators across classical, contemporary, popular and screen-based music. A long-standing pioneer in music education, the school launched some of the nation's first programs in recording arts and music industry, built one of the world's most comprehensive screen scoring programs, created groundbreaking master's degrees in arts leadership and community music, and reimagined classical training for 21st-century artists.

Located in the Global Creative capital of Los Angeles, Thornton offers unmatched access to the entertainment industry, world-class artistic partnerships and a dense ecosystem of cultural institutions that allow students to build professional careers before graduation. With more than 1,000 students across over twenty disciplines, Thornton's programs are supported by internationally renowned faculty, exceptional student ensembles, innovative research centers and world-class facilities. Guided by its mission to cultivate 'beyond category' musicians, USC Thornton fosters a supportive, inclusive and creatively liberated community where students develop multiple artistic identities and engage Los Angeles as both a laboratory and a launchpad for their careers.

Photo Credit: Julian Buchan