New Orleans Center for Creative Arts


New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, or NOCCA, is the regional, pre-professional arts training center for high school students in Louisiana. NOCCA opened in 1973 as a professional arts training center for secondary school-age children. Located in New Orleans, it provides intensive instruction in culinary arts, creative writing, dance, media arts, music, theatre arts, and visual arts while demanding simultaneous academic excellence.
NOCCA was founded by a group of artists, educators, business leaders, and community activists. Tuition is free to all Louisiana students who meet audition requirements. Students from over 100 public, private, parochial and home schools attend in the afternoon or late-day as well as Academic Studio students who attend NOCCA for the full day. Academic Studio students, accepted by a successful arts audition, learn through problem-solving and project-based learning. Students graduate from NOCCA receiving a TOPS University Diploma. Every year, 95-98% of NOCCA graduates go on to college and conservatory programs across the country. Approximately 80% of NOCCA students receive scholarships to pursue such higher education as well.
Graduates include Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick Jr., Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet, Mary Catherine Garrison, Anthony Mackie, Wendell Pierce, Gary Solomon Jr., Jon Batiste, Joshua Stewart, Gustave Blache III, Nicole Cooley, Erica Wiltz, Nicholas Payton, Trombone Shorty, Poppy Tooker, Terrance Osborne, Wanda Boudreaux and DJ Hollygrove of The Chopstars.
In 2000, NOCCA moved to a campus in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood. Before that, NOCCA was housed for many years in an old elementary school building on Perrier Street in Uptown New Orleans.

Mission and curriculum

NOCCA provides professional arts training, coaching and performance opportunities for high school level students who aspire to be creative artists. Recognizing the enrichment of society through the arts, NOCCA will continue development and implementation of a program of intensive instruction within the learning environment of an arts conservatory. At the center of the instruction program is the philosophy of artist/teacher as mentor. As practicing professionals in their fields, faculty members remain engaged in such activity at levels appropriate to the stage of their professional careers and in ways that benefit the quality of instruction at NOCCA.
NOCCA students receive pre-professional arts training in one of eleven different arts disciplines, and additionally may participate in a full-day academic program, the Academic Studio.
Inaugurated in the fall of 2011, NOCCA's innovative Academic Studio is a full-day, diploma-granting attendance option. Using the same master-apprentice teaching model that has defined NOCCA's arts-training environment, the Academic Studio offers students an interconnected approach to learning in math, science and the humanities. The curriculum is designed to be highly integrated: math and science are taught together, English and history are taught together, and each academic area is connected to arts training. The Academic Studio is grounded in the same master-apprentice approach that sits at the heart of NOCCA's arts training program. In addition to their academic faculty, students have the opportunity to learn from guest lecturers and the team of scholars from around the world who have helped develop the new curriculum structure. To enroll in the Academic Studio, prospective students must successfully complete an arts audition and be accepted into a Level I program in one of NOCCA's eleven arts disciplines.

Admissions process

NOCCA acceptance is by audition only.

College acceptance

Over 95% of NOCCA graduates are accepted into universities and conservatories each year. NOCCA alumni have studied at Ball State, Berklee, Boston Conservatory, California College of the Arts, California Institute of the Arts, Curtis Institute of Music, Cooper Union, Emerson, Florida State, Full Sail University, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Juilliard, Loyola University New Orleans, Louisiana State, Parsons School of Design, Purchase, Southern Methodist, Tulane, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of New Orleans, and Xavier University of Louisiana.

Notable alumni

The NOCCA Institute is NOCCA's community support and advocacy arm, providing supplemental funding for NOCCA students and advocacy for NOCCA’s programs. With the support of corporations, foundations, and individuals across Louisiana and the globe, the Institute has helped turn NOCCA into a flagship professional arts training facility.