Mission

The mission of CSSSA is to annually provide a select number of California high school students of the visual, literary, performing and media arts with an intensive learning experience conducted by distinguished arts professionals, designed to enhance the students’ artistic skills and to develop their understanding as individuals of their potential for growth as creative artists.

By fulfilling its mission, CSSSA will:

• Provide recognition, distinction and professional training in the arts to a broadly recruited student body of talented high school students in a scope and manner not available anywhere else in California.
• Establish an educational community of professional artists and talented students that offers opportunities for creative risk taking, imaginative discipline, critical thinking, collaborative problem solving and leadership.
• Ensure that the school’s student body, faculty and curriculum are reflective and sensitive to California’s diverse cultural heritage.
• Support and encourage each student’s singular capacity for creative accomplishment.
• Provide an educational link with institutions of higher learning, major performing arts companies, commercial and fine arts institutions, and the film, television and recording industries in California for students wishing to pursue careers in the arts.
• Establish models for excellence in arts education and direct attention to the need for high quality arts programs in all California schools.
  
• Enhance the overall cultural climate of California by training future artists, who will contribute to and become advocates for the arts.
• Help to ensure the long-term development of artists for the arts and entertainment industries, which currently comprise California’s second largest business sector.
• Position California, home to 20% of America’s artists, as a leader in striving for excellence in the arts.
• It is our expectation that some CSSSA graduates will become professional artists. Others will go on to apply their creative skills in other professions. The goal of CSSSA is to provide an educational experience that goes beyond the practice and improvement of aesthetics and technique. We want to broaden our students’ understanding of their creative potentials, regardless of their eventual life paths.

History

In the early 1980’s it became apparent that California was facing increased competition from other states for its third-largest source of tax revenue, the arts and entertainment industries. Film, television and recording studio complexes, which had been traditionally developed in California, were being built in Florida, Texas, and other locales. Motion picture industry executives and producers were increasingly looking outside of the state for production opportunities. Many of California’s non-profit fine arts institutions, and the state’s educational community, were feeling the effects of a diminishing interest in California from the commercial arts sector.

A three-year effort to establish an educational environment for young California artists began in 1982. As a California Arts Council member appointed by Governor Jerry Brown, philanthropist Wendy Goldberg provided the leadership for public support of legislation sponsored by State Senator Alan Sieroty to launch a planning process. She enlisted Frank Rothman, Chairman and CEO of MGM, to mobilize the entertainment community on behalf of this initiative, which ultimately was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.

Under the leadership of Ms. Goldberg a twenty-four member Advisory Council chaired by Los Angeles cultural leader Joan Newberg consisting of legislative, arts, and industry leaders were appointed by the California Arts Council and the State Board of Education to explore the cause of the talent drain, and to recommend statewide educational opportunities. One of the problems the Council discovered was that many of California’s most talented young artists and entertainers were leaving the state to attend arts training programs in New York, North Carolina, Michigan, and other states – and staying on to live and work where they went to school.

The work of the committee culminated on September 28, 1985, when Governor George Deukmejian signed the bill, authored by State Senator John Garamendi, which created the California State Summer School for the Arts. The major objectives stated by the Legislature in establishing the school:

• 1 To enable artistically gifted and talented students, broadly representative of the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of the state, to receive intensive training in the arts through a multidisciplinary program;
• 2 To provide a training ground for future artists who may wish to study and practice the arts or to pursue careers in the major performing arts companies and the commercial and fine arts institutions in California; and
• 3 To establish a model for partnership between the public and private sectors.

CSSSA held its first summer session in 1987, and proved so popular and successful that Governor Deukmejian signed follow-up legislation making the program a permanent program of the state in September of 1990. In 1992, Governor Pete Wilson signed legislation that allows the school to accept a limited number of students from outside of California, thereby making it an international program.

The California State Summer School for the Arts is the result of unique public and private sector planning and support. Now embarking on its thirty-ninth summer of operation, the school has trained more than seventeen thousand highly talented students.