December 14, 2007
An Alliance staff member describes ongoing work in New Orleans
The following is a piece written by the Alliance's staff member Gregg Sinner on his current work in New Orleans:
Imagine a magical place where adults express their caring and concern for youth by challenging and nurturing students—through inquiry and imagination—to discover their own goodness and creative genius, by design. The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) is such a place.
NOCCA|Riverfront stands proud and vibrant next to the railroad tracks that run along a massive barrier that keeps the mighty Mississippi in its place, about a half-mile down river past the French Market at the edge of the Faubourg-Marigny neighborhood.
NOCCA has been nurturing and challenging talented high school student-artists since 1973. A look at the website provides a window; the website itself recently won the 2007 National Arts in Technology Award! To be at NOCCA means to become immediately engaged in an amazing place.
Remarkable people—students, faculty and staff—and a fine facility, as well as support from the state of Louisiana and the community make NOCCA what it is. Serious learning and teaching in arts-skills training have a profound impact on student learning beyond the arts. While NOCCA is a place of joy and seemingly endless celebration of the arts it is also a place that demands hard work and dedication, which banishes cynicism and builds instead personal resilience and self-determination—for art, for learning and for life. The Storm (as Katrina has come to be known to locals) has had the effect of making the denizens of NOCCA, like those in the community itself, stronger and wiser—if a little sadder in moments of reflection—during the rebirthing of the City of New Orleans.
NOCCA is state-funded and offers arts-skills training as electives for Louisiana secondary school students, but is not a school per se. Students are admitted to NOCCA via audition; and the culture is personalized and purposeful, with up to 400 secondary level students enrolled in a variety of arts elective programs during the course of the year. Dedicated teacher-artists and staff inspire and elicit from students hard work and dedication to do whatever it takes to achieve greatness. The banner over the entry archway says, "Excellence is within Reach at NOCCA" and so it is.
However, thoughtful internal dialog about the future of the organization is leading to the possibility of NOCCA becoming a full-time arts conservatory. Strategic planning may lead to an exciting, innovative program of studies that continues to be based on inquiry and imagination in the arts, but expands upon this core competency of arts-skills training to a more holistic approach to secondary level learning that leads to high school graduation.
Recently, The Education Alliance at Brown University became a partner with NOCCA during this time of growth and development. Personally, I have the good fortune to be working on this project as an Alliance Program Planning Specialist. I feel honored to be learning and contributing during this process as NOCCA lives into its expanding future. My own professional inquiry has been and remains focused on creating conditions in educational settings for transforming learning and schooling to better serve all students and the common good. As a new focus in that inquiry, I am addressing this question: How does an established, successful and highly acclaimed arts-skills training program expand—to become a more holistic program of studies that leads to high school graduation? I suspect that if this is the right question, we will find the answers at NOCCA.
