The NOCCA Institute, formerly known as Friends of NOCCA, provides supplemental funding for NOCCA|Riverfront students and advocacy for NOCCA|Riverfront's world-class program. With the support of corporations, foundations, and individuals across Louisiana and the globe, the Institute has helped turn NOCCA|Riverfront from a fuzzy idea into a flagship pre-professional arts training facility. Here are a few of the Institute's more notable endeavors:
- The Institute's Term-Time Financial Aid Program
offers assistance to disadvantaged students for the equipment, supplies, and private lessons they need to keep pace with NOCCA|Riverfront's pre-professional curriculum. Shoes for young dancers cost about $55, and a student may go through six pair in a year. Musicians must take care of their instruments and are typically required to take extracurricular lessons. Without Term-Time aid, such expenses--combined with transportation and other costs of attending NOCCA|Riverfront--would be unmanageable for families on public support or a fixed income. - The NOCCA|Riverfront Summer Term Financial Aid Program
provides funds to students from across the state meet the expenses of studying at NOCCA|Riverfront during the summer. Although there is no tuition, there are the costs of room and board to consider, as well as supply fees. Summer Session awards help children from Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Monroe, Shreveport, Thibodeaux, and beyond take advantage of this top-notch arts-training program. - The Institute's Summer Study Financial Aid Program
allows students to take part in some of the best summer programs in the country, including The Juilliard School, the Art Institute of Chicago, and North Carolina School of the Arts. Expenses for these programs can range anywhere from $500 to $5,000 per child. It costs $3,000, for example, for rent, meals, subway tokens, and supplies for a dance student in New York for eight weeks, and that figure does not include the $915 tuition at Alvin Ailey or airfare. Many families can afford only a portion of these costs. Summer financial aid makes up the difference. - The Institute's Artists-in-Residence Program sponsors over 150 master classes and workshops taught by regionally and nationally acclaimed artists-artists like dancer Gregory Hines, playwright Edward Albee, authors Sheila Bosworth and Andrei Codrescu, and actor Wendell Pierce, to name only a few of the talents hosted over the past few years. With their years of professional experience, these artists pass on priceless instruction and offer NOCCA|Riverfront students a link to the international community of poets, painters, pianists to which they will soon belong.
- NOCCA|Riverfront's new home
The Institute lobbied the State of Louisiana for $18 million in construction funds and raised $5 million itself in private donations to equip the school. The 136,000-square-foot facility provides the rehearsal studios, performance spaces, and state-of-the-art technology students need to become arts leaders of the 21st century. Since January of 2000, this extraordinary facility has allowed NOCCA|Riverfront to serve nearly three times as many students as it enrolled in its previous home.
To celebrate the move to NOCCA|Riverfront, the Institute began the CENTER STAGE concert series, the "On the Edge" gallery series, and the Creative Readings Series, all of which allow our magnificent visiting artists to share their work with the general public. To learn more about these and other exciting offerings, please click here.