A catalyst for boundless creativity.
Arts
At MICDS, the arts are an integral component of the JK-12 curriculum. In fact, the arts are considered a core subject where students have vast opportunities to study music, theatre, dance, and studio arts. Our Rams enjoy five performance venues, and we have over 20 dedicated arts faculty, including experts of national standing. Create with us!
In the spring, all current and newly enrolled MICDS families, faculty, staff, and alumni are invited to celebrate the Arts at MICDS Arts Fest. Amid a plethora of performances and activities suitable for all ages, guests come together to enjoy the afternoon in many wonderful and creative ways. Check out a glimpse of Arts Fest in the highlight reel below!
Opportunities in the Arts
Unleash your imagination.
Theatre Arts
From production to performance.
MICDS offers multiple avenues for students to explore theatre arts, both behind-the-scenes and in the spotlight. Performers are coached by our world-class faculty to feel as confident as solo artists as they do supporting an ensemble. Students learn technical theatre skills, including lighting, set, and sound design. The MICDS theatrical experience caters to all divisions of students of various interest and skill levels, offering age-appropriate challenges and inspiration to make our Rams lifelong patrons of the Arts.
Music
Discover your own beat.
From choir concerts and band performances to our orchestra productions, students of every division create musical melodies throughout the year. They perform, listen, rehearse, and work together while sharing harmonies at assemblies, competitions and everything in between.
In Lower School, students in Junior Kindergarten through fourth grade partake in our early childhood music program and are part of the Beasley Choir which offers Orff instruments, recorders, and ukuleles. An after-school strings program and private piano lessons are also available.
All students in Middle School take music with a choice of band, choir, and orchestra. These courses are supplemented further through a variety of exploratory classes provided in Winter Term (i.e. musical, ukelele, digital music, and build your own instruments).
The Upper School offers the opportunity to deeply develop artistry with a range of levels in band, choir, and orchestra. Every year, MICDS sends students to All-State who score very highly in the regional and state competitions. We also take our music ensembles to festivals.
Studio Arts
Express yourself.
A foray into the world of photography, ceramics, sculpture, digital design, drawing, and painting, MICDS is home to a vibrant Studio Arts program. As evidenced by the handcrafted masterpieces on display throughout the School, our commitment to the arts is palpable. Classes include photography, ceramics, painting, drawing, photography, architecture, digital art and design, sculpting, and more.
Performance Spaces
Orthwein Theatre
Orthwein Theatre is a 350-seat proscenium space with isolated booths for lights, projection, and sound as well as integral platforms for follow spots.
Performance Spaces
Price Theatre
Named after legendary actor and St. Louis Country Day School alumnus Vincent Price '29, Price Theatre is a flexible 35 by 40-foot black box theater that seats around 90 people.
Performance Spaces
Freeman Theatre
Middle and Lower School students enjoy the Freeman Theatre, a studio performance and classroom space that seats up to 135 people and features a computerized light board and sound system.
Performance Spaces
Mary Eliot Chapel
As part of our historic Danforth campus, Mary Eliot Chapel is a full theater that hosts concerts, assemblies, and talent shows. It includes a full backstage area with drama and musical rooms along with our newly-renovated band room.
Performance Spaces
Brauer Auditorium
Brauer Auditorium, located in the Upper School STEM building, is the performance and rehearsal space for the orchestra. It is a state-of-the-art performance venue featuring a beautiful stage capable of hosting everything from intimate chamber groups to large orchestras, with seating for 800 and exceptional acoustics. It's equipped with a robust sound system for various events, including Upper School assemblies, International Expo performances, and movie nights. The auditorium also provides a versatile backstage area for performers to gather and store equipment, plus a dedicated classroom for the Virtuosi, complete with V9 technology, a baby grand piano, keyboards, and a wide array of percussion instruments.
Rehearsal Spaces
Beasley Studio (Lower School)
The Beasley Studio is a multifunctional space that serves as a music room, assembly space, and performance space. The studio can seat the entire lower school due to the tiered seating in the space. This tiered seating is also wonderful for audience members during productions such as Grandparents' Day and is helpful for students during choir class. As a music room, the Beasley Studio houses wonderful resources, such as an Orff instrumentarium (xylophones, metallophones, and glockenspiels), ukuleles, recorders, world drumming instruments, an electronic drum set, keyboards, hand chimes, and a variety of non-pitched percussion instruments. Students have access to props, costumes, puppets, and manipulatives to make their music and movement experience come to life.
Rehearsal Spaces
Middle School Band Room
Renovated in 2023, this space is a traditional band room in Mary Eliot CHapel that can easily accommodate 45 band students with room for growth. The MICDS Band Program has a wealth of resources for beginners and seasoned Middle School band students. Band players have access to several instruments or are welcome to rent their instruments. These instruments include woodwinds (flute, clarinet, oboe, bass, clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, and baritone saxophone), brass (trumpets, trombone, baritone Tuba), and percussion (snare drum, bass, drum, crash symbols, suspended symbols, xylophone, congas, bongos as well as other percussion instruments). Currently, we have approximately 100 instruments for MS and US students.
Rehearsal Spaces
Middle School Choir Room
Description coming soon!
Rehearsal Spaces
Alumnae Room
The Alumnae Room was converted in 2020 to a classroom to accommodate larger groups during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since become the home for our Middle School Orchestras and after-school Strings program. This beautiful room, bathed in natural light, retains some of its original furniture and a historic rug, blending its past with its present as a fully-equipped modern classroom. It boasts V9 technology with a soundbar, chairs, stands, a baby grand piano, keyboards, a variety of percussion instruments, and ample instrument storage racks. Additionally, a dedicated breakout space allows for small group practice or one-on-one student-teacher meetings.
Rehearsal Spaces
Dance Studio
Our 40-foot by 60-foot dance floor, fully upgraded in 2024, is a Rosco SubFloor that was installed with a marley vinyl overlay (Cascade line of the Harlequin brand). Being a sprung subfloor, it absorbs energy from the impact of a dancer, providing a good balance of flexibility and support for dance movements. It also has brand-new wall-to-wall mirrors. Students experience a variety of dance styles in this space, including basic ballet, jazz, and modern dance as well as dance composition. During Winter Term, students are taught dances from all around the world. It is also the venue for the Middle School Dance Club, the Upper School Dance Team, and the MS & US yoga units and sessions.
Rehearsal Spaces
Upper School Choir Room
The Upper School Choir room hosts daily rehearsals for our three Upper School choirs: Chamber Choir, Treble Choir, and Tenor-Bass Choir. It is also where the AP Music Theory course meets. The room boasts built-in platform risers, a Yamaha Grand Piano, and it has both video and audio recording capabilities.
Rehearsal Spaces
Bryant Arts Center Band/Orchestra Room (Upper School)
This space is a traditional large music ensemble room that can easily accommodate 80 instrumental students. This space is utilized for Orchestra classes, Upper School Band, Jazz Band, and Pep Band. The MICDS Middle and Upper School band students have access to approximately 100 instruments, including a variety of woodwinds, brass, and percussion instruments. They can also rent their instruments. MICDS Orchestra students rent or own their instruments.
Studio Spaces
Studio Spaces
Arts students create masterpieces in well-equipped art studios located throughout campus: Lower School students utilize their art studio, Middle School students create in the Freeman Arts Building, and Upper School students enjoy the Upper School Studio Suite in the Bryant Arts Center. Each division also has its own dedicated makerspace.
Studio Spaces
2D Art Studio (Upper School Studio Suite)
The 2D Art Studio is an artist’s dream space. Students have access to 18 drafting tables, table-top easels, central accent lighting, a large light table, four sinks, pre-stretched canvases, a Logan Platinum Edge mat cutter, a printing press for relief block printing, collagraph, embossing, engraving, and etching, paints, drawing media, drawing boards, quality paper, supports, brushes, drawing tools, printmaking supplies, large whiteboard surfaces, large digital touch-screen, overhead projection, and an array of still life objects. Student artists enjoy digital access to Adobe Creative Cloud, in-class image resources, guidebooks, and reference texts, Art Department photo-documentation stations, and access to printing.
Studio Spaces
Darkroom Photography Lab (Upper School Studio Suite)
The Upper School Darkroom Photography Lab, home to the Darkroom Photography class, is set up with 14 stations, each with an enlarger to project and make prints on paper. Students have access to Canon film cameras, camera bags, paper, film, and they develop their own film. After taking their photographs and developing the film, they work under the red safelight in the darkroom to print their images. In addition to the enlargers, they use darkoom trays with a developer where the chemical reveals the image, a stop bath halts the development, and a fixer makes the photo permanent and light-resistant. Next, the photo is rinsed in a water bath before being placed on the drying rack. In this room and class, students learn all about how to take a proper photo and develop an appreciation for light and process.
Studio Spaces
Ceramics Studio (Upper School Studio Suite)
The full ceramics studio, filled with natural light due to the large wall of windows on one side of the space, has a new large-capacity electric front-loading kiln (kiln room), seven electric pottery wheels for thowing clay, a new pugmill, mid-range clay bodies and glazes, a large communal table for hand building, a designated storage shelf for each student, space to display student work, and two sinks. There are many resources for students to explore and experiment with materials and student voice.
Studio Spaces
Digital/Computer Lab (Upper School Studio Suite)
In our digital lab, known unofficially as the Mac Lab, there are 18 workstations with desktop Mac computers, equipped with Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Fireworks, and Acrobat Pro), Adobe Creative Cloud, as well as the full Microsoft Office suite. There are two Epson color printers, an HP color printer, a large format printer, a color laser printer, and three flatbed scanners. Classes taught here include Digital Photography, Photo 3, Photo 4, AP 2D Design, Digital Design I & II, CAD/Rendering, and Mobile Application Development.
Studio Spaces
Sculpture Studio (Upper School Studio Suite)
The Sculpture Studio supports exploration in 3D. It has a waterjet, 3D printer, a variety of tools, and access to 3D Design programs such as Autodesk. Students are able to try many different traditional and contemporary sculptural methods and materials in this dedicated sculpture studio.
Studio Spaces
Biggs Family Makerspace (Upper School Studio Suite)
The Upper School Makerspace, a dynamic two-room workshop that doubled in size in 2024, is fully equipped with an extensive array of additive (resin and filament-based 3D printing, sewing, embroidery, a Cricut Joy) and subtractive (full-spectrum laser cutters, CNC mills, etc.) manufacturing tools. It is fully stocked with traditional power tools, handworking tools, benchtop woodworking and metalworking tools, and a wide variety of materials. This versatile space is accessible to all Upper School students throughout the year for individual projects, club activities like Robotics, and cross-curricular collaborations, and it also welcomes Lower and Middle Schoolers, enabling the creation of diverse projects from model roller coasters and artificial hands to quilts and everyday repairs.
Studio Spaces
Messing Gallery (Upper School)
The Messing Gallery fosters an appreciation and understanding of contemporary art and its role in society for the students of MICDS and the public at large. The Gallery acquires, exhibits, and makes art from emerging and established artists accessible to a variety of audiences. MICDS hosts visiting artists and the exhibiting artists often work with our students across subjects and disciplines. The Gallery also displays student and faculty art.
Studio Spaces
Middle School Art Studios
The two Middle School Studio Arts spaces are located in the Freeman Arts Building. The building is like an oasis made specifically for artistic, creative endeavors. Both studios are spacious with lots of natural light and designed to have our student artists feel free to use a wide variety of materials without worrying about "making a mess." The studio designs are open-room concepts with multiple stations for artmaking, containing tools and materials ranging from full-size kilns, slab rolling machines, and extruders to woodworking, painting, printmaking, recycled materials, and more. The studios are also fully equipped with high-end technology used to assist in multiple learning processes as a medium for art-making as well as for sharing information with students.
Studio Spaces
Middle School Makerspace
A melding of modern technology tools (laser cutters, CNC, 3D printing, etc.), traditional power tools, and hand tools, the Middle School Makerspace is home to numerous hands-on projects, integrating with each of the disciplines and with advisories in the middle school. The space is available throughout the year to all students in grades 5-8. Students can also create in the Makerspace after school during second semester, during Winter Term, and there are introductory enrichment courses that teach about tools and software for fifth and sixth graders.
Studio Spaces
Lower School Art Studio
The two-room Lower School Art Studio in Beasley is a magical space where students can connect with a variety of materials and tools to help students freely explore both two-dimensional and three-dimensional art forms, allowing young artists to bring their visions to life. Whether students are drawing, painting, sculpting, designing digitally, printmaking, or more, each child has opportunities to grow, express themselves, and discover their artistic potential. In the Art Studio, every child is an artist who develops their craft, reflects, engages and persists, stretches and explores, expresses their ideas, envisions new possibilities, observes the world around them, and understands community. It is a place where anything is possible, and our imaginations can create new worlds.
Studio Spaces
Beasley Makerspace (Lower School)
The Beasley Makerspace is an extension of our Lower School teachers' classrooms. This space provides a unique opportunity for students to engage in hands-on learning experiences and unleash their creativity. Teachers can bring their classes to explore, build, and create, enhancing their learning in a tangible and interactive way. The Makerspace is equipped with state-of-the-art tools and resources that empower students to bring their ideas to life. It houses 3D printers, laser printers, and a Cricut Explore Air2 Machine, a variety of materials, robots and engineering sets, a greenscreen, and a recording studio.
Arts Boosters
We believe that art is for everyone.
Promote & Fundraise
Our Arts Boosters volunteers share updates on arts-related news and activities, as well as promote upcoming events and performances. They work diligently to help provide MICDS students with the best fine arts resources like instruments, supplies and new technology.
Events
Events throughout the year allow the MICDS community to celebrate our thriving arts programs and our students' unique talents and accomplishments.
