Performing and Visual Arts
Performing Arts:
Voices, Instruments, Actors – Saint Stephen’s students experience the performing arts in a wide variety of classes and productions. Students, whether they are stepping into performance for the first time or the hundredth time, are encouraged and supported by performing arts teachers who are all professionally trained and educated.
Our youngest falcons begin with regularly scheduled simple instrumental, vocal and movement experiences. A fantastic World Music Drumming program deepens understanding of rhythms and coordinated group performance for students from kindergarten through middle school. Instrumental music starts early with Orff-Schulwerk and other methodology, moving to strings for all fourth grade students, band for all fifth graders and selections of vocal, instrumental and performance acting throughout all the grades. At school and in the community, you’ll see Saint Stephen’s students performing in plays, festivals, and concerts during every month of the year. Our bands ring in the holidays with the Jingle Bell Jam at Neel Auditorium; our Fledgling Falcons sing to their Falcon Friend seniors at graduation and students of all ages perform in the all school musical.
At Saint Stephen’s, students receive the instruction that allows them to participate individually or in groups in the full range of performing arts.
Visual Arts:
Color and line, pencil and paper, camera or brush – Saint Stephen’s fosters the skills and the confidence that allow all of our students to express their ideas in visual media. From our Fledgling Falcons to our seniors, visual arts are part of the regular schedule of classes as students explore a wide variety of visual media with teachers who are specialists in their fields.
Saint Stephen’s students exhibit and place in a wide variety of juried art shows, such as the Sarasota Airport Competition, Congressional Art Competition, Gamble Plantation Art Competition, NCECA K-12 National Ceramics Competition Exhibition, Florida Art Education Association K-12 Digital Exhibition, and Southern Teachers Agency Calendar Art Competition. Recently, Saint Stephen’s Media and Broadcasting class won first place in the Manatee Healthy Teens Coalition Film Competition which is associated with the Sarasota Film Festival. Throughout the campus and on our website galleries, you will see examples of this award-winning art. In the spring, the PK-8th Spring Art Show and the Upper School Alexi Tucker Memorial Juried Art Show highlight the students’ achievements and successes in the visual arts program.
Saint Stephen’s provides the skill-building program and the exhibit venues that allow each student to develop the knowledge and self-assurance to pursue the visual arts.
