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Each year, National Arts in Education Week allows educators and community members to advocate, educate and recognize the impact of the arts in student lives and communities. This year's observance is Sept. 11-17, but in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the arts are celebrated all year long.
CMS Arts Education offers a variety of programs where students can express themselves artistically. These include dance, music, band, orchestra, choir, theater, media arts, photography, ceramics, visual arts and contemporary craft and design, which focuses on work with textiles, fibers, jewelry and metals. The CMS Arts Education team encourages creativity in all students and the belief that the arts are essential for a complete and balanced education.
"'Creativity is oxygen' is our Arts Education motto," said Justin Pierce, CMS visual arts specialist. "Creativity is all around us. All students are creative, and all students are welcome."
One of the district's growing programs is digital media arts, which was started by the Arts Department in 2015. The program has been highlighted nationally, with presentations at the National Art Education Association in Seattle and Boston in 2018 and 2019. Work by CMS teachers and students also has been added to the new edition of the Visual Experience, the nationally recognized textbook for the visual arts.
"Transitioning out of digital photography classes, we wanted to offer more in terms of what digital media arts has to offer careerwise," Pierce said. "This has evolved and grown as digital art applications and jobs have increased."
Jobs in the digital media arts require specific skills in addition to having creative talent. Students need to be proficient with computers, along with good communication, writing, researching and editing skills. These can translate into career options such as journalism digital media, digital filmmaking and digital art media. Classes focus on these skills as students build not only arts-related skills, but also lifelong learning and business skills.
"The digital media arts program offers new digital techniques and software applications that you cannot fit into a visual art curriculum that is more hands-on and historically based," Pierce said. "Both are vital as we see our culture changing in how we communicate, how we begin to understand ideas and how we define approaching problem-solving in 2022."
The Arts Education team also has been working to develop important community partnerships, including last spring's collaborations for digital media arts with the VAPA Center, Metrographics Printing and Charlotte Is Creative. Partnerships extend to other disciplines through the E3 (exposure, experience, education) program, which has offered arts-related experiences for students since 2018. Students have said they can see themselves and their future potential within the arts experiences, which are provided by the Charlotte Ballet, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Children's Theatre of Charlotte, the Mint Museum, Opera Carolina and The Light Factory.
Visual artwork from more than 50 CMS schools will be on display Sept. 16-18 at Festival in the Park at Freedom Park in Charlotte.
