Core Values
Curiosity
Curiosity is the engine of learning and the mother of creativity. Our goal is to systematically create, facilitate, and engage the creative mind and lay a foundation for a lifelong love of learning. To inspire curiosity, we must engage students’ current interests, provide novel experiences, and augment knowledge with the tools students need to fulfill their visions.
Confidence
A confident individual will travel at the boundary of known and unknown, develop an appetite for intellectual and creative risk and be able to arrive at innovative solutions. We seek a community where every individual feels empowered, works step-by-step to achieve long-term goals, and successfully links passion to a meaningful purpose.
Expertise
We believe students with a high level of expertise and mastery in their artistic field have the best opportunities and experience an important sense of accomplishment. To achieve this goal, students are immersed in focused study of an artistic field, taught by experts, and held to high standards of competency and skill. Through this process, students learn how to manage a wide range of information and use it to build context, relevancy, and problem solve.
Collaboration
Working with others in collaborative projects is increasingly important, in artistic disciplines and beyond. Collaboration reinforces the idea that, while each of us is unique, we are all stronger and more powerful when we combine the skills and understandings of others; especially when they bring insight from other disciplines. To promote the collaborative initiatives, we must weave projects into the curriculum and devote staff time to facilitating and leading the effort.
Purpose
Developing an individual voice is critical to building a sense of purpose and to creating meaningful artistic work. To develop purpose-driven students, we must respect the individual, build skills that link curiosity and passion, and be open to the individual’s artistic production. Our goal is to create opportunities to foster the individual’s artistic and intellectual response.
Global Perspective
Thanks to a wide range of technological innovations, the people of the world are increasingly connected. To access the world’s information and disseminate one’s work widely, one needs to be aware of the world at large and how to engage with it. To promote students’ understanding of the larger world and their place in it as citizens and as artists, we must provide opportunities to authentically connect with a wide range of people, culture, art, and life experiences.
