Alabama School of Fine Arts
| Alabama School of Fine Arts | |
|---|---|
| Address | |
|
1800 Reverend Abraham Woods Jr. Blvd Birmingham, Alabama 35203 |
|
| Information | |
| School type | Independent school; Public; Partially residential |
| Motto | Public Education with Passion |
| Founded | 1971 |
| Executive Director | Michael Meeks |
| Grades | 7-12 |
| Enrollment | 330 (2014) |
| Language | English |
| Website | http://www.asfa.k12.al.us/ |
The Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) is a public, partially residential high school located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, United States. It provides career, college preparation, and technical education to students from grades 7-12 and is a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools.
The six specialties of the school are music, visual arts, theatre arts, creative writing, math and science, and dance. The largest of these is math and science with an enrollment of around 100 students. Music is the second largest department, with the other departments being smaller portions of the student body.
The school began in 1968 with a group of Birmingham arts community leaders, James Hatcher and Peggy Beddow Cook, who acquired funding from Governor Lurleen Wallace to support instructional programs based in community arts agencies after school. The Alabama Legislature formally created the school with a resolution in 1971. The school was located at Samford University, with the dance program being located at UAB, but moved to Birmingham–Southern College in 1974. While there it was consolidated into five arts programs and a core academic program, staffed in part by the Birmingham City Schools.
The school moved to its own temporary downtown Birmingham campus in 1976. At this time the private, non-profit Alabama School of Fine Arts Foundation was established to raise funding to build an all-new campus complex.
A new law was approved by the Legislature in 1992 to provide for authorization for the school. The school moved into its new $10 million facility in the heart of Birmingham’s cultural district the following year. A theater was added to the campus in 1995, followed by a mathematics and science wing in 1996. A creative writing wing was added in 1999. The ASFA Foundation began a new capital campaign in 2006 to raise money for the construction of a new theatre complex. The fundraising took many years, with construction lasting 17 months and costing $8.5 million. The new 500-seat theater, named in honor of Dorothy Jemison Day, was opened on March 30, 2012 with an ASFA theatre department production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town.
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