Many Egyptians working in Ministry of Culture institutions and, increasingly, in youth development NGOs have tried to dedicate themselves to the project of “culturing children and youth” (tathqif al-atfal wal-shabab). A major goal of these projects is to progress the Egyptian nation by teaching young people a variety of skills seen as necessary to building a better future for the society within the world marketplace. This future is defined through longstanding discourses of nationalist developmental modernism, increasingly melded with neoliberal market ideology. But what happens to these aspirations when the material conditions for this developmental modernism in the state sector are subject to neglect and corruption, or when the tedium of corporate audit practices takes over at arts and youth NGOs? How do people manage the tensions within the subjectivation processes of these different institutions, in which material circumstances and daily life are often at odds with institutional discursive practices? This paper explores the lived experiences of culture workers at two institutions in Egypt: a once internationally acclaimed, now dilapidated, government-run youth cultural center; and a relatively new NGO meant to develop youth through the arts which, partly in response to international accolades, is trying to introduce rationalization into its daily operations.