With the Field Trip Series the Institute offers high quality performances in music, dance, and theatre to the youth of the region. The Series is based on the premise that the arts are important and necessary to the learning process and provide students with unique possibilities for growth and development.

Read More

Sometimes schools offer correspondence following McCallum student performances. Such was the case when Palm Desert Learning Tree forwarded artwork from teacher Beth Beardsley’s first graders who attended New York Storyteller David Gonzalez’s Aesop Bops!

From this compilation of Aesop’s Fables, youngsters embraced the stories shared and created their own images to reflect characters from The Lion and the Mouse and The Turtle’s Shell. We share some of these colorful masterpieces with you here. Enjoy!

Artists: Anthony Mufich, Katelynn Bruhn, Karli Rosario, Bano Imtiaz, Jordan Ozur, Ileena DeLeon, Olivia Williams, Rylee Lind, Courtney Fray and Evelyn Abraham

Music: Wisp by Daniel Kelly

The Aesthetic Education Program places the arts at the center of inquiry-driven learning experiences that include attendance at McCallum performances and exhibits. Teachers and students who partner with the Institute are encouraged to be curious, ask questions and rigorously explore works of art to awaken imaginative learning. Designed to cultivate perceptual abilities and higher thinking skills, this year’s program serves 172 teachers and 5160 students in 27 local schools. Over eleven hundred individual workshops are facilitated by MTI teaching artists in partnering classrooms across the valley, preparing students for deeper and more meaningful encounters with works of art.

"It was amazing to see my students concentrate on the movements, the relationship to the music, and then create their own work using what they had experienced. The medium of dance became real to them. Many had never had the opportunity to observe dance, let alone participate in creating one."
— Laurie Hernandez, Sunny Sands Elementary, Cathedral City

This artwork was created as part of an aesthetic education based study of Cuentos — Tales from the Latino World, a storytelling performance created and performed by David Gonzalez at the McCallum Theatre. In Cuentos, David tells the story about when he was young and his uncle told him that trees could sing; gifting him with his first hand−made guitar. This story inspired art−making activities where students at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in La Quinta, using glue and chalk, created their own guitar motivated by the music they imagined it would make.

Artists: Sebastian Ascencio, Anika Hess, Marissa Stella, Heather Barnhart-Armstrong, Andrew Garcia, and Rafael Valadez

This Valley-wide talent competition is a perfect opportunity to showcase your talent! If you sing, dance, play an instrument, juggle, do magic, comedy, or another self-contained novelty act, here's your chance to perform at the McCallum.