Experience the Transformative Power of the Arts


Located in the heart of New Haven’s Audubon Arts District since 1973, ACES Educational Center for the Arts is a public, half-time, magnet high school serving the 25 school districts in south central Connecticut and beyond. 

  


We at ECA believe in the capacity of the human spirit to create, connect and transform. Through the intensive study of music, dance, theatre, writing or the visual arts, ECA students learn alongside practicing artists and peers as they discover their creative potential. At ECA, we question and collaborate, play and perform, as we explore ourselves and our world.

Our Faculty

Actors • Choreographers • Composers • Conductors • Dancers • Digital Artists • Filmmakers • Jazz Musicians • Journalists • Painters • Photographers • Playwrights • Poets • Screenwriters • Sculptors ° Singers • Sound Artists • Storytellers 

 

 

 

ACES Educational Center for the Arts inspires, educates, and fully prepares our students to become exceptional artists and global citizens.

At ACES ECA, multicultural education and arts education are highly compatible and complementary. One of the most effective ways to actualize multicultural education is through the arts.

At ACES ECA, arts education creates a forum for awareness and change. The three elements of global citizenship education (multicultural literacy, global citizenship, and social justice) influence and teach students to know, to care, and to act in order to make the world more just and humane:  ultimately, defining a student’s role of identity in culture.  In the 21st century, our students identify with a new kind of citizenship, which ACES ECA has evolved with, naturally embedding into their school culture - multicultural citizenship. It recognizes and legitimizes the right and need of citizens (our students) to maintain commitments both to their cultural communities and to the national civic culture.

Multicultural education through the arts help students to develop the knowledge, attitudes, and values needed to participate in a nation that fosters civic equality for all groups, but also simply develops empathy in our future leaders and global citizens. This important aim of ACES ECA helps our students develop global identifications and a deep understanding of the need to take action as citizens of the global community to help solve the world's difficult global problems. Cultural, national, and global experiences and identifications are interactive in a dynamic learning experience that ACES ECA provides through global experiences, artistic innovation, and teacher-led mentoring that symbiotically prioritize problem-solving, collaboration, and critical sharing.

To develop cultural, national and global identifications, students acquire the skills and mindset to function within and across diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, language and religious groups amongst their peers. Because of the growing ethnic, cultural, racial, language and religious diversity throughout the world and at ACES ECA, multicultural education through the arts and global citizenry supports our students to function effectively in the 21st century, making major contributions to prepare them to be thoughtful and active artistic intellectuals.