The arts are not extra.
They are essential.
At Woodlawn, every student is an artist. Theater, Music, Voice, and Visual Arts are woven into the school day from Early Childhood through graduation, not as electives, but as essential ways of thinking, making, and knowing.
Four disciplines.
One program. Every student.
The arts at Woodlawn are part of the curriculum, not supplemental to it. Theater teaches students to inhabit a character’s perspective. Music builds the discipline of practice and the courage of performance. Voice develops students’ ability to communicate with power and presence. Visual Arts asks students to think by making things and to share that thinking with an audience.
These are not four separate programs. They are four ways into the same set of outcomes: Agency, Advocacy, Awareness, and the Durable Skills that every ‘Blazer carries beyond graduation. Explore each below.
The stage is where
‘Blazers learn to own the room.
Theater at Woodlawn is not just about performance. It is about learning to read a room, inhabit someone else’s perspective, and communicate with confidence in front of a real audience. Students in Lower School encounter theater through dramatic play and storytelling. By Middle and Upper School, they are writing, directing, performing, and building productions from the ground up.
The Red Barn Playhouse is Woodlawn’s dedicated performance venue. The Red Barn Players, the Upper and Middle School theater company, produces full-scale annual productions for the campus and wider community. Every student who has ever stood on that stage knows it: the work is real, the audience is real, and the growth is permanent.
Music is how
‘Blazers learn to listen deeply.
Music at Woodlawn begins in PK and continues through 12th Grade. The General Music curriculum builds the whole musician: students play instruments, sing in chorus, learn to read music, study theory and composers, try composing themselves, and trace the history of music and its instruments.
The program performs for real audiences every year: at Night of the Arts, the school’s signature public performance event, and at Christmas in Davidson in the wider community. The stakes are real. So is the pride that follows.
Every ‘Blazer has
something to say.
Voice teaches them how.
Voice at Woodlawn is both a choral and a solo discipline. Students develop their ability to produce sound with intention, control, and expression: skills that are musical but also deeply personal. The voice is the instrument you carry everywhere. Learning to use it well changes how students carry themselves in every other context too.
From Lower School choir through Upper School vocal performance, the Voice program gives students regular performance opportunities in school community events, the Night of the Arts, and productions with the Red Barn Players. The courage it takes to sing alone in front of people transfers directly to the courage it takes to advocate for an idea, lead a presentation, or speak up in a room that is not expecting to hear from you.
‘Blazers who
think by making things.
Visual Arts at Woodlawn is a studio practice from the very first year. Students in Early Childhood work with paint, clay, and natural materials to develop sensory understanding and expressive confidence. By Upper School, they are pursuing sustained projects in specific media, engaging with design thinking, and presenting finished work to real audiences at the annual Night of the Arts exhibition.
Across every grade, the Visual Arts curriculum emphasizes process as much as product: drafting, revising, throwing out, starting over. Students who go through Woodlawn’s visual arts program leave with more than a portfolio. They leave knowing how to think through a problem by making something, which turns out to be useful in every field there is.
Night of the Arts.
Once a year, the entire Woodlawn arts program comes together for Night of the Arts: a single evening where students across every discipline present their work to the school community and the public. Music students perform. Voice students sing. Visual Arts students exhibit. Theater students take the stage.
Night of the Arts is the most visible expression of what the arts at Woodlawn produce. It is also, in the words of many families who attend for the first time, the moment when they understand what kind of school this is.
Earn the Performing +
Fine Arts Pathway.
Upper School students who commit deeply to the arts at Woodlawn have the opportunity to earn the Fine + Performing Arts Pathway of Purpose: a formal designation that appears on the ‘Blazer transcript and reflects sustained, serious engagement across one or more art disciplines. It is one of five Pathways available to Upper School students and one of the most personally meaningful for the students who earn it.
Come see the
arts in person.
Schedule a tour and walk the Red Barn stage, the visual arts studios, and the campus where Woodlawn students make their work. We serve families across Mooresville, Davidson, Cornelius, Huntersville, and the Lake Norman region.