Why SOTA

The Tacoma School of the Arts opened in the Fall of 2001 in downtown Tacoma. The school’s proximity to cultural organizations like the Museum of Glass, Tacoma Art Museum, and Tacoma Arts Live provides opportunities for students to engage in the local visual and performing arts community. Classes are taught through the lens of art, and students choose a major in the visual or performing arts.

SOTA is committed to integration: we want students to see their learning, their world, and their lives whole. Thus we seek to help students make connections within academic disciplines, between the academics and the arts, between their lives now and their lives as they enter the larger global community in a very few years. With this holistic vision firmly in mind, we also believe students deserve the opportunity to go deep – to develop and pursue a particular passion at increasingly greater depth, guided by mentors in our community who can encourage excellence.

SOTA in Action

Programs & Activities at SOTA

Classes are taught through the lens of art, and students choose a major in the visual or performing arts.

The Visual Arts Department at SOTA is an academically challenging program created to help students develop their own style through carefully designed curriculum. Courses are taken in sequence, one each semester of the freshman and sophomore year beginning with the required basic Drawing and Foundation classes. After completion, students may then elect to pursue Photography, Graphic Design, Filmmaking, Advanced Illustration, or Painting. Each area of study contains its own sequence of courses, integrating beginning and advanced students as both teacher and learner.