Ariel Jackson is one of those kids who had no choice but to become an artist. One of four siblings growing up in the New Orleans 9th Ward, Jackson had been compelled to paint and draw from a young age. She craved additional instruction, and by the time high school rolled around, she had applied and was accepted to the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, the 27-year-old academy known for honing the skills of aspiring artists.
NOCCA is not a high school, but a rigorous supplementary arts academy. Accepted students attend classes after school, on weekends and in summer camps. Attending NOCCA can make for a ferocious schedule, but most of its students are so motivated to improve their craft they become masterful at time management. Of 103 graduates last year, 102 went on to colleges or conservatories throughout the country, earning $7.2 million in arts scholarships in the process, says Interim President and CEO Kyle Wedberg.
Jackson appears to be on her way as well. An accomplished fourth-year painter at NOCCA, and a senior at respected Benjamin Franklin High, she has submitted applications to renowned arts schools like The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York and the Rhode Island School of Design.
“NOCCA really challenges you to do better and better,” she says. “There is nothing like working around a bunch of fellow artists. It’s an incredible experience.”
NOCCA’s teachers are drawn from the rich pool of artists, writers, musicians, dancers and dramatists in New Orleans. Wedberg says they not only teach technique, they also demonstrate what’s required to make a living. For example, jazz students can see what it’s like to tour and perform by working behind the scenes—and sometimes playing—at Snug Harbor, a renowned jazz venue.
It’s also highly experiential. Recently, when a music class didn’t fully understand their instructor’s lesson on funk, he brought in local funk musicians to demonstrate.
“For the percentage of students who are very serious about art and who want to try art on as a career, this is the place for them to come,” Wedberg says. Many have. Among the school’s successful alumni are Wendell Pierce of HBO’s The Wire, singer and actor Harry Connick, Jr., and musicians Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason Marsalis.
While NOCCA has had few kindred programs around the state, the post-Katrina era suggests arts education may be gaining new traction. The storm’s interruption of New Orleans’ indigenous culture brought attention to the economic heft of the so-called cultural economy. More than ever, state and local leaders are discussing the value of the arts in luring tourists, and, more importantly, in keeping and attracting a new creative class of full-time residents who will demand quality schools, jobs and arts and culture activities.
The next part of the conversation, arts educators hope, is to ensure that there is a steady pipeline of homegrown artists, arts administrators and patrons of the arts. They see arts schools and arts curriculum as the answer.
“We started the Northshore School for the Arts after Katrina, because we really wanted to make sure the cultural economy remained vital in Louisiana,” says Director Charlotte Lowry Collins.
Launched in fall 2006, NSA is an intense arts education program run by Southeastern Louisiana University for talented area high school juniors and seniors.
Like NOCCA, students attend classes on evenings and weekends. SLU faculty members teach a special track of classes in subjects like music theory, drama and fine art, along with one-on-one music instruction. The goal is to help students prepare for college arts programs and later, arts careers. Collins says many students will attend Louisiana universities and work in the state, one of the program’s goals.
Like NOCCA, NSA impresses upon students the importance of building a portfolio, one of the biggest factors in nailing college arts scholarships. The program started small and has grown to 28 students from St. Tammany, Livingston, Tangipahoa and East Baton Rouge parishes. Collins expects future growth, particularly since classes occur on SLU’s main campus in Hammond and through satellite locations in St. Tammany Parish.
“For many students, it’s the first time they’re really being pushed to build their portfolio. They’re getting all sorts of opportunities to perform and grow as artists and to work on academic research and theory,” Lowry says. “And they’re in a setting that also exposes them to the management and business end of things.”
Lowry hopes to reach a new group of students with an intensive film institute this summer. She says the multi-media curriculum is a good fit for the state’s growing film and video game industries.
For most aspiring artists along the corridor, intense public arts instruction is the exception, not the norm. The options narrow as children get older. High school students are steered toward a small number of designated arts magnets or schools of choice in their communities. For those students not classified as talented, mainstream arts curriculum tends to dissipate after elementary school.
Programming in general has been geared more toward elementary school children than high school students,” says Toni Brown, arts education director of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge.
Meanwhile, elementary schools themselves have struggled to maintain consistent arts curriculum. The gradual erosion of instruction began in the seventies but was exacerbated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, says Ken Cole, associate director of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. The act is often accused of causing a negative shift in public school priorities because it ties federal funding to a school’s ability to perform in a few core areas. Accountability is measured through test scores.
“For schools that are underperforming, those other subjects not being tested, like art and social studies, get crowded out,” Cole says. “The terrible thing about it is that the ‘whole child’ is not being educated. Art helps in cognitive development and in keeping kids engaged.”
The argument that arts are “superfluous fluff” doesn’t fly, especially now that the industry’s economic impact has been documented.
“It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry that employs millions and has the ability to attract people to live in a new area and to draw tourists,” he says. “When we talk about the 21st century workforce, these are the kinds of skills that are going to be important.”
The workforce argument is gaining traction, thanks in part to author and lecturer Daniel Pink, who has made a career of arguing for innovation and self-employment. His bestseller, A Whole New Mind, posits that the future of the country depends not on pigeon-holing workers into the celebrated careers of the past, but on pushing students toward creativity, so that they can think on their own, be better problem solvers, spot entrepreneurial opportunities and innovate.
Brown adds that the skills used in studying the arts “are the critical thinking skills employers are going to be looking for.”
The Arts Council’s Community School for the Arts is hoping to expand local options, particularly for serious high school students and adults. The Community School, which currently provides arts classes and camps, was launched in conjunction with the Shaw Center for the Arts when the building opened in 2004. Its aim is to provide opportunities for artistic instruction to people of all ages. Elementary programs have been well received, says Brown. Now the program hopes to reach older kids.
“It’s one of the things we’re working toward—offering courses for serious teenagers and adults,” she says. “We’ve got a good base to build on.”
Progress has been made at the state level on the policy front as well. Buying into the argument that the arts bring added value by helping to improve test scores across all subjects, the 2007 Louisiana Legislature passed a bill that requires the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to develop, adopt and implement a visual and performing arts curriculum in public schools beginning with the 2010-2011 school year. Legislators unanimously approved Senate Bill 299, sponsored by Democrat Sharon Weston Broome of Baton Rouge. Thirty-five states have passed similar laws.
The new legislation could tackle what Cole says is one of the biggest issues in arts education: equity.
“More affluent schools have always had robust arts education programs, but that has not been in the case in schools in poorer communities,” he says. Arts curriculum requires space, supplies, materials and specialized instruction—amenities many low-income schools have historically not been able to afford.
The ability to offer top-flight instruction to low-income and affluent students equally has been one of NOCCA’s most indelible successes, Wedberg says.
“The range of students’ personal experiences when they get here is incredible. We have students now from 116 different schools including rural, urban, home-school, rich, poor, public and parochial,” he says. “And they’re all here for the same thing, to become better artists.” Many of NOCCA’s students receive scholarships, supplemented by the school’s nonprofit fundraising arm.
Jackson can attest first-hand to what life is like for a young artist with, and without, an option like NOCCA. Shortly after classes began in her first year at the school, Katrina hit, destroying her home in the Ninth Ward and sending her and her family to live in Evangeline Parish for the next school year.
“There was nothing like NOCCA there—it was very hard and very disappointing to not have that kind of instruction,” she recalls. ?The next summer, Jackson’s family returned to New Orleans, where she re-enrolled at Benjamin Franklin High and at NOCCA. Returning to painting and being around her instructors and fellow students helped her work through the oppressive sense of loss.
“Growing up I wanted to be a famous artist, that was my thing,” Jackson says. “Now, I want to give back. I want to teach because I want to reach out to kids who don’t have a NOCCA.”
