Curriculum

The curriculum of the Missouri Fine Arts Academy is divided into three distinct categories of study:

  1. Interdisciplinary Artistic Studies
  2. Discipline-specific Artistic Studies
  3. Elective Classes

1. Interdisciplinary Artistic Studies

The Interdisciplinary (ID) course at Missouri Fine Arts Academy

  • Is facilitated by a team of teachers from different artistic disciplines
  • Is composed of a student group, including artists from various disciplines, that stay together throughout the duration of the class
  • Revolves around a broad theme that embraces all of the following disciplines: vocal music, instrumental music, visual arts, theatre, and dance
  • Provides all students with active participation experiences in each of these disciplines, facilitated by peers and by teachers with artistic expertise
  • Allows student to shape, in great measure, the course experiences
  • Recognizes the facilitators have valuable experience, insights, knowledge, and talents
  • Includes a concept-based interdisciplinary presentation that encompasses student participation in all the fine arts areas and addresses the broad theme
  • Culminates in an evaluation session that includes evaluation of the presentations themselves, group processes, and student learning

Each student will spend every class day morning working in an innovative course of an interdisciplinary nature.

Each interdisciplinary group is composed of about 25 students, including vocalists, instrumentalists, visual artists, dancers, and actors. Each group experience is facilitated by two faculty members with specialties in different artistic disciplines. Students and facilitators in each group work collaboratively to explore a single broad theme. The process of exploration naturally involves students’ participation in experiences that meet Missouri’s performance standards for students in its schools

  • Gather, analyze and apply information and ideas
  • Communicate effectively within and beyond the classroom
  • Recognize and solve problems
  • Make decision and act as responsible members of society

Each of the five interdisciplinary groups creates a unique presentation that illustrates the Academy theme and that incorporates all the artistic disciplines represented at the Academy. These presentations are shared with the rest of the Academy community. A reflection and evaluation session follows the presentations.

Course Objectives (.doc, 39K)
Rationale, Plan and Strategies (.doc, 46K)

Course Descriptions

Acting through the Lens: A Self-Tape Film Acting Workshop

Instructor: Laine Cordell

Young artists will explore how to give a strong audition on film, how to market themselves as a well-rounded professional, how to build a résumé, understand typecasting, and focus on the fundamentals of film acting, screen tests, vocal music auditions and understanding the new wave of the industry in self-taping.

Ama-ZINE: Collaborative Art & Writing

Instructor: Meganne Rosen

In this interdisciplinary course, art and writing students team up to create a collaborative zine that amplifies their unique voices through visual storytelling and creative writing. Students will explore the art of zine-making, from concept development and page design to writing, illustration, and layout. Through workshops and critiques, they will experiment with mixed media, comics, poetry, essays, and more. The course culminates in a printed and digital zine that showcases their collective creativity, emphasizing collaboration, self-expression, and DIY publishing culture.

Art as Equity

Instructor: Tanner Munson

Historically, art has been a critical foundation of the history of protest and struggle to achieve equity in the United States and across the globe. Whether music, poems, paintings or other forms of creative expression, art has been at the core of efforts to express emotion, communicate difficult concepts, spur action and change what seems impossible. Art has been particularly important in illustrating and helping to facilitate how people understand what racism is, how it feels to experience privilege or oppression and exploring the implications of policies and practices that affect us indirectly or directly. This course includes several arts-based examples to illustrate how art can facilitate insights, observations and strategies to address inequalities in our world.

Clay Percussion

Instructor: Kevin Hughes

This course would involve students creating udo drums out of clay that they make while simultaneously developing a performance based on percussion and dance that would celebrate diversity, inclusion, and community. This original performance will be performed at the showcase.

Creating for a Better World: Art as Equity

Instructor: Rick Briggenhorst 

Historically, art has played a critical role in protest movements and the fight to achieve equity in the United States and globally. Whether through music, poems, paintings or other forms of creative expression, art has been at the core of efforts to express emotion, communicate difficult concepts, ignite action, and change what seems impossible. Art has been particularly important in illustrating how it feels to experience privilege or oppression and exploring the implications of policies and practices that affect us indirectly or directly. In this course, we delve into several arts-based examples that demonstrate how art provides insights, observations, and offers strategies to address inequalities in our world and begin to shape change. “Creating for a Better World: Art as Equity” empowers students to recognize the impact they and their creativity can have on the world around them. By collaborating across disciplines, students will develop a project that impacts positive change in their MFAA experience or beyond. The ending result could be an immersive experience, performance, zine, video, etc.

Expanding Our Experience

Instructor: Erin Tyler

This student-centered course invites participants to broaden their understanding of art through interdisciplinary exploration and reflective making practices. Activities such as deep listening, automatic drawing, oblique strategies, and group improvisation will foster curiosity and provide new approaches to creativity. We will examine contemporary artworks that challenge traditional boundaries, sparking group discussions on how art can question norms, evoke emotions, and tell powerful stories. Through collaborative synthesis of their experiences, students will work together to create a final project that integrates multiple artistic disciplines, pushing the limits of creative expression while reflecting on their personal and collective journey.

Holding Space

Instructor: Dr. Heather Nelson

Artists in this course will examine how we inhabit, move through, utilize, hear, and eliminate space in various ways through art. We will examine how reducing or expanding space changes how we interact with each other and with art, and how different artists use space to draw our attention to certain details of works in music, visual art, literature, and drama.

Interdisciplinary Music 1

Instructor: Jacob Hiser

Form tends to be thought of as one of the more abstract elements of making art. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s the container that focuses and directs creative ideas, giving a distinct shape to an artistic work, yet it’s often the least discussed (especially pre-college). Without form, art, like language, is gibberish. Form gives meaning to what we have to say. We’ll study concrete ways of dealing with form, observing and participating in traditional formal structures throughout history, exploring how they can direct movement, sound, visual art, and writing. We’ll generate our own formal structures that suit our own artistic interests, playing with varying levels of freedom and control within those structures. Finally, we’ll collaboratively create a work that incorporates the concepts we’ve studied and the unique discoveries we’ve made over the course of the academy.

Interdisciplinary Music 2

Instructor: Dr. Jason Hausback

This course covers the basic elements of a music theatre production and some background in how to create a short musical, including structure, storyline, acting, and integrating music (both original and using pre-existing recordings) to create and stage an original production by the end of the academy. 

Interviews and Art

Instructor: Gemma Campanini

Students will emerge from this course with a variety of creative works responding to the told stories of their peers. In addition, students will gain interview skills, both on the interview and interviewee side. This class facilitates the integration of effective communication with artistic response through empathy-building and introspective collaborative practice.  First, students will pair up with a partner. Students will create powerful interview scripts designed to get to know the classmate and understand the artist: what motivates and drives their peer’s art, what goals their peers have for their artmaking, and so on; the students will practice effective notetaking to capture beautiful stories from the interviews. Once each student has both interviewed and been interviewed, they will work collaboratively to create first a poem in response to their peer, as well as a performance in another discipline. Finally, once the responding art pieces have been crafted, groups will merge as a class during the final class period to demonstrate their work to gain class feedback and grow collectively as artists.

Making a Museum

Instructor: Shaylin Montgomery

In this class, students will study existing museum experiences before creating several museum experiences of their own. What form these experiences will take will be decided by the students, but each experience will reflect the Academy’s theme of transformation. Like most museum experiences, the ones designed here will be visual, verbal, auditory, and much more; in this way, each of the fine arts will be addressed and honored by all students.

Musical Theatre

Instructor: Michael Butcher

Students from all disciplines learn how musical theatre is constructed, created, and performed. Students will create an original musical performance and perform it at the showcase.

Theft by Finding

Instructor: Dr. Perry Mears

In this course, we will explore the ways artists throughout history have borrowed, copied, and outright stolen the creative ideas of others. We will practice imitating various styles of visual, musical, and verbal composition, discussing how such imitation may help students find their own artistic voices. We will investigate the ethics of “borrowing” in the creation of works of art, particularly as it relates to AI.


2. Discipline-Specific Artistic Studies

Each student is placed in a class focusing on the discipline in which they were accepted to the Academy:

  • Creative Writing
  • Theatre Studies
  • Instrumental Music
  • Visual Arts
  • Vocal Music

Course Descriptions

Creative Writing

Free Verse Universe

Instructor: Gemma Campanini

This course will enable students to analyze, write, prepare, and ultimately perform original free-verse poetry through an array of collaborative activities, group discussions, and individual writing prompts. After studying the foundational concepts of written-style verse, students will be empowered to develop writing and delivery styles that draw upon their unique voices and talents to create powerful performative works.

Storytelling with Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat!"

Instructor: Shaylin Montgomery

In 2005, Blake Snyder took the writing world by storm with the publication of a book entitled "Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need." This book offered tips for writing great stories using a formula that was flexible enough to accommodate whatever wild adventures authors could imagine but structured enough to ward off that ever-present evil: Writer’s Block. Over the years, the principles outlined in Snyder’s text have been applied to a variety of storytelling mediums—from film to TV to novels, and so much more! In this class, student writers will learn about "Save the Cat!" storytelling as they write "Save the Cat!" stories of their own. (NOTE: Writers of all genres—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and more—can benefit from an understanding of this process.)

Music - Instrumental

Eyes and Ears: Hearing What You See, Seeing What You Hear

Instructor: Dr. Perry Mears

Instrumental Music with Dr. Hausback

Instructor: Dr. Jason Hausback

Topics in this course include the building blocks of music, learning how to analyze music, music performance coaching, an exploration of modern performance techniques/compositional styles, and presenting a group performance at the end of the Academy.

Instrumental Music with Mr. Hiser

Instructor: Jacob Hiser

Topics in this course include the building blocks of music, learning how to analyze music, music performance coaching, an exploration of modern performance techniques/compositional styles, and presenting a group performance at the end of the Academy.

Music - Vocal

Not Quite Karaoke

Instructor: Tanner Munson

An in-depth look at contemporary commercial music and the vocal training required to perform this style of music successfully. Students will engage in a variety of activities including: the preparation of a solo piece, resources available for high-quality arrangements of popular songs, tools to transpose tracks into keys appropriate for their range, and technical exercises to assist with healthy vocal development. Students are encouraged to arrive with a song they feel best shows off their abilities.

The Living Instrument: Singing as a Whole Person

Instructor: Dr. Heather Nelson

In this course, we'll explore how singing is a whole self-activity, involving the brain, the body, the emotions, and our own personal histories in deep ways. We'll explore vocal health, practice techniques, mindfulness, among other things, and how to integrate these things into our life on the stage. Our focus will be both working on our voices in the present moment and singing for life. Students should come with three songs in various stages of preparation: one song performance ready, one song that is well-learned but needs some polishing, and one song in the beginning stages of learning.

Theatre Studies

Character Development

Instructor: Laine Cordell

Exploring Acting Techniques

Instructor: Michael Butcher

The main goal of this course is to explore various acting techniques in theatre. Students will be actively engaged in a variety of acting techniques and strategies.

Visual Arts

Abstract Exploration: Painting and Mixed Media

Instructor: Meganne Rosen

Drawing from the Natural World

Instructor: Erin Tyler with guest lecturer Meganne Rosen

Wabi-Sabi and Clay: Exploring an Aesthetic of Uniqueness in Clay and Life

Instructor: Kevin Hughes

YOU + U (Identity Collage Making)

Instructor: Rick Briggenhorst


3. Elective Classes

Each student takes two elective classes; one "A" Day elective, one "B" Day elective. Students may use the course selection form to submit their top three course choices for each elective period.

 

— "A" Day Electives

 

The Art of Binding: Transforming Paper into Purpose

Instructor: Erin Tyler

Books are more than just objects—they're experiences. In this hands-on workshop, students will explore the art of bookbinding, discovering how the form, sequence, and interaction of pages can shape a book’s purpose and meaning. We'll start by examining unique book designs and discussing how intention drives their creation, whether for sketching, journaling, or scrapbooking. Participants will then set their own creative intentions, collect and prepare materials, and experiment with basic bookbinding techniques to craft their own personalized notebook. The final session will be dedicated to filling and working in their handmade journals, transforming them into dynamic spaces for creative expression. No prior experience is necessary—just bring your imagination and a willingness to explore!

Category: Visual Arts

Choral Arranging

Instructor: Tanner Munson

Students will study choral music through the lense of an arranger, rather than a participant. They will examine musical concepts such as: harmony, polyphony, homophony, imitation, and call & response. Students will work on their own arrangement, culminating with a reading session of their pieces. 

Category: Vocal Music

Fun with Improv

Instructor: Michael Butcher

Students will learn basic improvisational techniques while participating in improvised activities. 

Category: Theatre Studies

Hump/Slump/Pattern: How to Make Functional Ceramics by Hand

Instructor: Kevin Hughes

This course will provide the participants with an opportunity to learn how to create functional pottery without learning the basics of throwing on the potter’s wheel. Hump/Slump forms are items from everyday life that can be used to support wet clay as is dries into the form that you have imparted to it. They can also be made from common materials like the blue or pink stiff foam insulation installed on the exterior of walls under the sheathing materials. This provides the individual a freedom to create their own designs of forms to create. Patterns like those used in sewing can be made from paper or roofing felt to create functional pottery forms. Other sewing techniques like “darting” can be used to create asymmetrical forms that visually reference qualities of whimsical movement and appear to be animated.

Category: Visual Arts

Practice 101

Instructor: Dr. Perry Mears

In this course, students will learn various methods of practice, how to implement them, and how to match an appropriate practice strategy for a particular musical or artistic challenge. Practice strategies will be demonstrated and workshopped. In addition, students will learn about the practice routines of artists past and present, exploring ways to develop their own routines.

Category: Instrumental Music

Spoken Word Poetry

Instructor: Gemma Campanini

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of stage-style free-verse poetry and helps students craft their own performance-style pieces. Students will learn the foundations of the art form, basic performance techniques (including microphone etiquette and stage-fright management), as well as how to edit their own work for a polished final product that is ready for the stage.

Category: Creative Writing

— "B" Day Electives —

Audition Prep Workshop

Instructor: Laine Cordell

Students will learn how to best prepare for an audition featuring a monologue or musical theatre song. They will need to come prepared with a piece ready to workshop and learn the invaluable tool of giving and receiving feedback, and the art of applying constructive criticism to a performance. We will touch on how to best overcome stage fright, understanding anxiety in audition atmospheres, and knowing how to know yourself and your limits as a performer.

Cateogry: Theatre Studies

The Business of Art

Instructor: Dr. Heather Nelson

We often spend the bulk of our time as young artists honing our craft, but in order to make art a career, we must also develop our business skills. In this course available to artists of all disciplines, we will broadly examine topics related to business, including marketing, money handling, and how to integrate the artistry with the practical. Students may benefit from bringing a laptop or a phone with internet capabilities to begin working on their own websites and marketing plans with any available time we have.

Category: Vocal Music

Music is the Universal Language

Instructor: Jacob Hiser

That phrase may seem cliché, but current music education practices tend to focus solely on being able to read the written language of music. When it comes to spoken languages, reading is an important skill, but the majority of our communication is through listening and speaking. We originally learn to speak by listening to what we hear and imitating it, eventually internalizing the words until we can communicate our own thoughts. To become fluent improvisers, musicians must build their lexicon of musical "words" by critically listening to and internalizing a wide variety of music by ear. Once a vocabulary is established, the improvisers then work to "speak" their own ideas in a clear, coherent way in any musical situation they find themselves in. In this course, we will listen closely to excerpts from classical, jazz, rock, and folk traditions, and learn them by ear, building our musical vocabulary and understanding of each genre's internal logic. Using that vocabulary and understanding, we will improvise as a group, arrange previously existing music, and compose new pieces and improvisatory structures. We will also explore improvisation beyond the boundaries of genre, experimenting with unfamiliar sounds, atypical formal structures, and using extra-musical materials as prompts for improvisation/composition. Knowledge of music theory is helpful, but not necessary. All instrumentalists and vocalists are welcome.

Category: Instrumental Music

Nonrepresentational Expression and Artmaking as Choice-Making

Instructor: Rick Briggenhorst

Have you ever seen a work of art or heard a song that fully embodies an emotion or story? For the artists to create these moving works they had to make hundreds of choices to get the emotion just right. We will learn a key lesson in making impactful contemporary art: the understanding that every choice we make when creating affects the communicative potential of our artwork. In this class, students will learn how to utilize the elements of art and principles of design to create impactful, highly unique, nonrepresentational artwork that embodies personal stories and emotions. “Nonrepresentational” simply means we will shift from focusing on realistic depictions of the world to focusing on depicting expressive emotions and experiences through abstraction. Using a variety of materials, including acrylic paint on two-dimensional surfaces, students will begin with guided experiments that demonstrate how color can be used to tell a symbolic story and how different line qualities and brush strokes can express a range of emotions from comfort and discomfort. Following the experiments, the students will create a final project under an umbrella concept decided upon by the class.

Category: Visual Arts

Publishing Process

Instructor: Shaylin Montgomery

Lots of students want to become published writers, and lots of publications are looking for teen writers to publish. Unfortunately, these two groups seldom meet. In this course, students will learn about the publishing process—from locating a potential publisher (or agent) to submitting a query letter and manuscript—with one ultimate goal in mind: to successfully submit a query letter to at least one publisher or agent.

Category: Creative Writing

Weaving in the Wild

Instructor: Meganne Rosen

Discover the art of weaving with a natural twist in this hands-on elective. Students will create unique woven works using found branches and traditional kumihimo rope-weaving techniques. Emphasizing creativity and connection to nature, the class explores techniques like wrapping, knotting, and braiding with fibers, yarns, and organic materials. Through individual and collaborative projects, students will craft textured pieces inspired by the environment while learning the cultural histories of weaving practices from around the world.

Category: Visual Arts