ArtsWest offers courses in Performing and Visual Arts, including Music, Dance, Theatre, Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, as well as Media Arts such as Videography and Broadcast Journalism, and Creative Writing courses such as Poetry, Playwriting, and Writing Non-Fiction.
Why Study the Arts?
- The arts optimize brain neuron development and circuitry.
- Learning through the arts often results in greater academic achievement and higher test scores.
- The arts have both intrinsic and instrumental value; that is, they have worth in and of themselves and can also be used to achieve a multitude of purposes (e.g. to present issues and ideas, to teach or persuade, to entertain, to design, plan, and beautify).
- The arts assist motor development especially coordination of hands, eyes and body.
- The arts provide forms of nonverbal communication that can strengthen the presentation of ideas and emotions.
- The arts help troubled youth, providing an alternative to delinquent behavior.
- Attributes such as self-discipline and perseverance, which are so necessary to the arts, can transfer to many future endeavors, academic or otherwise.
- Studying the arts decreases performance anxiety and teaches kids how to handle and manage stress.
- Lifelong participation in the arts is a valuable part of a life fully lived.
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Creativity is innate in every human being. Being able to use that creativity is essential for a successful, happy life. Creative passion empowers human beings to accomplish anything they imagine or dream. To lose this passion is to suffer one of life's personal defeats.
The highest goal of education, then, is lighting the fire of creative passion. Lives change when students learn how to reach into their creative possibilities and realize that, in whatever path they choose, those possibilities can go with them. Education in the arts shows students that the highest form of art is the creation of one's own life.
Studies show that only one variable determines the amount of creativity an individual has, and that is the belief in his own creativity. At Arts West, we encourage individual creativity in every facet of our students' education, thus providing a "believing mirror" for the child's own self-image
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