Twenty-one percent of students of low socioeconomic status who had studied music scored higher in math versus just eleven percent of those who had not. By the senior year, these figures grew to 33 percent and 16 percent, respectively, suggesting a cumulative value to music education.
The project is designed to encourage students to interact with the fine arts by having a lot of study space for all student use, having galleries on the first floor and available to the public during proper hours and by creating a living gallery in the basement where the practice rooms and studios are located, so students can watch the process of putting together a theater production. The project is laid out so to draw the interest of students through the arts and coming to a point at a black box theater
The structure holds an amphitheater; a black box; audio studios; a library; a large art gallery; a dance studio; and an interactive building structure that allows for actual engagement of the arts through the architecture itself. The building is very adaptive to adjust seating for certain areas, and there are areas with varying degrees of transparency to allow for the observation of the “behind the scenes” of art and its creation.
Kent State University's Integral Theater
This project encourages the connection of the arts to the experience of education among students, specifically Kent State University. It is believed that the integration of the fine arts can indirectly contribute to better student attendance and lower dropout rates, can help students create better social connections (which lowers fighting rate), and can positively impact the learning of students of lower socioeconomic status as much or more than those of a higher socioeconomic status.
