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Arts Program

Creative Arts was founded on the belief that the education of the whole child includes ongoing exploration in dance, drama, music, and visual arts. To that end, every school day for every student at CACS involves opportunities to play, invent, and discover. As part of a universal, cross-cultural language, the arts represent innate aspects of our common humanity, providing an inherent foundation for communication and a bridge for understanding across differences of age, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomics, and culture.

We have four full-time resident artists/art instructors on staff at CACS who host weekly student workshops in our beautiful art studios. Our arts instructors are active and accomplished artists in their respective fields. (Check out Arts Coordinator Tiffany Graham's work on her web site.)

The arts coordinator collaborates with the arts staff to organize exhibitions and performances and to work closely with all classroom teachers to integrate the arts into their curriculum. This dynamic exchange allows students to become well-versed in a wide range of art media and techniques as they enhance their core competency skills. They also learn the social, historical, and multicultural relevancy and impact of the arts.

From Kindergarten through 5th grade, students participate in three art classes in visual arts, music, and dance each week.

• During the first half of the year, the K-3 visual arts program focuses on the creation of individual fine-arts projects in a variety of media, introducing students to a rich array of materials, techniques, contemporary artists, and art history. These projects are often thematically inspired by poetry, music, or social justice issues. Following the Winter Exhibition every student takes home a portfolio with works in watercolor, acrylics, mixed-media, and printmaking. During the second half of the year, the imagery from these individual student art pieces is combined to create a large-scale collaborative mural project.
• At the 4th to 8th grade level, visual art workshops are broadened to allow students to develop their artistic autonomy and their own voices as artists. More conceptually based, the curriculum has a greater focus on topical issues in art. The upper-grades arts program is designed to foster in all student artists a commitment to life-long learning in the arts.
• Based on the Orff Schulwerk approach, the music program weaves together strands of speech and poetry, movement and dance, drama and song, improvisation and set pieces, as well as use of the body and voice. Students sing folk songs from around the world, rock, jazz, and rap. They move in creative ways, play instruments, learn folk dances, tell stories and play games that teach them beat, rhythm, and pitch. These elements evolve as the students grow from Kindergarten to 8th grade, but the essential aspects of creativity, play, and the love of music remain constant throughout all grade levels.
• The dance program nurtures all students' unique way of expressing who they are through movement. In an environment of encouragement, consistency and mutual respect, student dancers are challenged both physically and creatively. Workshops are lively, exposing the children to a rich blend of jazz, hip-hop, ballet and creative movement to engage everyone and inspire imagination. Weekly workshops build toward two "Grand Performances," one at the Winter Exhibition and one at the Spring Show. (Visit Dance Instructor Corinne Nagata's web site to learn more about her rich experience and approach.)

At the middle-school level, students select a "core" art form that they wish to pursue in depth as well as choosing an elective arts class to attend once a week. Past electives have included beginning guitar, theater improvisation and monologue, stop animation, digital photography, African-American music- history, spoken word, silk screening, and careers in the arts.

The arts staff at CACS regularly invite guest artists from the wider San Francisco art community to join us in hosting short-term workshops that expand the exposure of our K-8 student artists to different styles of art-making. We also arrange field trips to museums, galleries, and artist studios. Samples of our arts-related collaborations with local organizations and institutions can be found on the Partnerships page.

The arts program lies at the heart and soul of the overall educational experience of every student at Creative Arts Charter School.