Poudre School District recognizes that students need a well-rounded education to be successful in a global world. The district is committed to offering comprehensive art education at all levels. With site-based management, each school determines how art will be offered to students. For site specific information, contact your school principal.
PSD Art Shows
- Designs and Images Art Show April 4 - May 6
PSD student artwork from all grade levels will be on display at the Designs and Images Art show April 4-May 6 at Foothills Mall in Fort Collins. A reception will be held 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday, April 4.
- 2023-24 SuperArt! year-long exhibit
This show celebrates the visual arts and honors art students across the district. Each year, PSD art teachers select one student's artwork to represent their school during this year-long exhibition at the JSSC lobby and boardroom 2407 Laporte Avenue in Fort Collins.
Why Art Matters
More PSD videos about art featuring students:
"We need less trivia and more in-depth learning about the things that matter the most in our world: order, integrity, thinking skills, a sense of wonder. truth, flexibility, fairness, dignity, contribution, justice, creativity and cooperation . . . the arts can do all that." Eric Jensen, author of Arts with the Brain in Mind.
Visual arts education prepares students for the future!
Visual arts education develops skills of deeper understanding and divergent thinking while also playing a vital role in cultivating collaboration, communication, critical thinking, curiosity, innovation, and problem solving, additional key competencies desired by employers. Visual arts education also develops emotional intelligence, the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
Art education is about thinking!
The Studio Habits of Mind framework was developed through the insightful research of
Harvard Project Zero
The eight “studio habits of mind” (Develop Craft, Engage & Persist, Envision, Express, Observe, Reflect, Stretch & Explore, Understand Art Worlds) describe the thinking that teachers intend for their students to learn during the process of creating. They are:
- Stretch and explore: Try out ideas, experiment with new ways of working.
- Engage and persist: Focus on and persevere in making artwork, even when it is difficult.
- Envision: Imagine possibilities, picture ideas, design and plan next steps.
- Develop craft: Improve art skills through practice and experimentation. Explore new tools and learn to care for them.
- Observe: Look closer and more deeply than ordinary looking requires.
- Reflect: Think, talk and write about the creative process.
- Express: Communicate ideas, beliefs, and feelings through a visual language.
- Understand the art world: Learn the history of art as well as contemporary trends. Collaborate with other artists.