In It Was All A Dream, students blend creative writing and animation to bring their stories to life. First, students develop original characters, conflicts, and resolutions. Then they learn animation fundamentals like movement, transitions, narration, and sequencing. By the end, their stories leap off the page in 3D-style animated films they’ve written and directed themselves.

A blank canvas can become a whole universe. In Sky’s the Limit, students use Microsoft Paint to learn the fundamentals of digital illustration layering, masking, contrast and composition — while designing their own planets and building them into a collaborative galaxy. Along the way, their work has landed on some pretty massive canvases (including the top of Salesforce Tower).

Poetry doesn’t sound or look like it used to. Today’s poets are Kendrick Lamar, Jhené Aiko, and Chance the Rapper — and our students tap into that same creative power. Through freestyle drills, word games, and improv, students write from the heart and bring their pieces to life with studio-style recordings, and mix them with their own original beats.

Is it possible to turn yourself into art? Brands and movements do it all the time — distilling complex ideas and stories into a single logo or tagline. In the Identity workshop, kids get to make their own personal logo and tagline based on what makes them unique, while learning the fundamentals of branding and design.

Technology has changed the way we shoot and edit videos, but the fundamentals haven’t changed. In the Music video workshop, students learn the basics of visual storytelling, composition, framing and pacing as they work together to shoot and edit a video for one of the songs they’ve created.