Celebrating National Arts in Education Week 2023

From September 10-16th, CCEF joins the nation in celebrating “National Arts in Education Week.” Hands-on visual and performing arts opportunities are an essential part of a well-rounded educational experience. CCUSD’s dedicated arts educators not only teach technical skills and encourage creativity, but they also allow learners to hone their problem-solving skills, and develop effective teamwork and collaboration strategies. Arts education can reinforce academic goals as well; theater activities reinforce language and literacy skills, and musical rhythms and melodies trigger mathematical processing in the brain. Artistic exploration of historical and global topics has also been shown to broaden students’ perspectives and worldviews. As one of our core funding areas, your donations to CCEF support arts education for thousands of CCUSD students each day.

Starting in elementary school, students experience the Culver City Art & Innovation Labs (CCAIL) that integrate visual arts concepts with pre-engineering design skills. Early grades are introduced to music starting with vocal music sessions. Instrumental music instruction begins in 3rd grade, when all students learn how to play songs on their own recorder, then continues in the 4th and 5th grades through the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra workshops, choir, and the elementary instrumental music program. Donations to CCEF help provide the resources to make these opportunities possible. 

At the middle school, CCEF sponsors theatrical productions by CCMS Performances and the highly popular Comedy Improv program. At both the middle and high school CCEF support provides musical instruments and access to SmartMusic learning software. And at the high school, CCEF funding supports the Marching Band, visual art classes, ceramics, the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts (AVPA) and many of the arts-related Career & Technical Education (CTE) Pathways. 

Last but not least, students in all CCUSD schools receive high-quality programming delivered by professional teaching artists from the Front & Center Theatre Collaborative, who bring the very best that Los Angeles theater has to offer directly to Culver City classrooms. Happy National Arts in Education Week to the many talented students and dedicated arts educators of CCUSD!