Cultural arts, such as music, art, drama, creative writing, photography and dance, are tools that help develop the mind and body, refine feelings, and thoughts and reflect and represent our customs and values as a society. Cultural arts help to explain the world in which we live through an exploration of creativity. They are multidisciplinary, cross-genre, and are less about the finished product and more about the process. The arts help us explore our society and ourselves.

Art Integration

Uinta Academy feels it is important that each student has the opportunity to experience many forms of art as a means of

• Developing artistic talents
• Teaching core curriculum
• Improving test scores
• Enhancing cognitive development
• Improving abstract reasoning skills
• Improving spatial-temporal reasoning skills
• Igniting love and understanding of the arts
• Building community
• Building self-esteem
• Encouraging self-expression

Our cultural arts program differs from that of other treatment centers because our instructor is not only an artist, but she is knowledgeable in all academic areas due to the fact that she was a general education teacher for over 30 years. She also has extensive training in arts integration with Opening Minds through the Arts Foundation of southern Arizona. She is familiar with and understands the ongoing research about arts education and uses effective teaching methods such as Bloom's Taxonomy and Marzano Strategies. The combination of her experience as a teacher and her expertise as an artist allows her to integrate the cultural arts into the students’ social, academic and therapeutic experience at Uinta.

Art Instruction and Outings

The students participate in 90 minutes of cultural arts each week. This time of exploration and self-expression benefits all students regardless of their previous exposure and skill level. Art education also takes place outside of the classroom in the form of monthly cultural arts outings to the theater, musical events, the ballet, the opera, museums, art walks, and other community events. Each student compiles an art portfolio that can be used for application to art schools or just to display her projects. Cultural arts education includes the following:

• Drawing, painting, elements of color, art appreciation
• Photography
• Interior design
• Literature, creative writing, poetry
• Theater, drama, tableau
• Singing and music appreciation
• Art history