Dramatic Performance: Benefits of Early Arts Exposure

Performances for school groups expand student and teacher understanding of the performing arts and reinforce classroom curricula. The arts develop critical thinking skills and an understanding of the creative process. Early engagement in the performing arts helps create unique brain connections in children that will have long-term impact on their lives.

Recognizing the extraordinary link between the arts and personal enrichment, cARTwheels gives children in North Carolina the opportunity to benefit from this creative, educational combination.

If you'd like to learn more about the benefits of early exposure to the arts please visit the links below. Notable arts in education programs can also be found here on our Web site.

Literature on the Benefits of the Arts

• Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition (2008)
• Assessing the Intrinsic Impacts of a Live Performance (January 2007)
• Arts Education: Creating Student Success in School, Work and Life (November 2006)
• Critical Evidence: How the Arts benefit Student Achievement (2006)
• Governor's Commission on the Arts in Education: Findings and Recommendations (July 2006)

Other Resources

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Performances for school groups are designed to expand the students' and teachers' understanding of the performing arts and reinforce classroom curricula. These events also assist in the development of critical thinking skills and an understanding of the creative process.

• Changing Education through the Arts (CETA)
• National Partnerships
• Partners in Education

Americans for the Arts
Early engagement in the visual and performing arts has significance on the life of a child because these experiences help create unique brain connections that will have long-term impacts on that youngster's life.

Lincoln Center Institute
The Lincoln Center Institute (LCI) is a global leader in education and the arts. In more than three decades of outreach, LCI's approach has reached over 20 million students, teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and professors of education worldwide. LCI is based on a strong philosophical approach to arts in education grounded in the progressive tradition of such renowned educators as John Dewey and Maxine Greene. The Institute's approach and principles support learning across the curriculum, build critical thinking skills, and stimulate the perceptual abilities of young learners.

Teacher Resources from Learner.org

• The Arts in Every Classroom, K-5
• Connecting with the Arts, 6-8
• The Art of Teaching the Arts, 9-12

Helpful Links

• 21st Century Skills Framework
• Arts Education Partnership
• The Imagine Nation
• Arts Education Initiative for Santa Clara County
• National Endowment for the Arts Education Leaders Institute
• The Arts Education Partnership - Publications
• The Arts of Collaboration: Promising Practices for Integrating the Arts and School Reform
• Arts Edge