Seattle Culture
Art for All
Cornish launches robust community school
By Rob Smith October 3, 2023
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2023 issue of Seattle magazine.
Want to learn how to dance? Maybe welding is more your thing. Or drumming or playing the guitar.
You can learn how to do all those things and much more through the Cornish+ program. The new community school within Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts offers 60 studio-based classes in music, art, design, dance, theater, and film.
Cornish+ is a much more robust version of the college’s former extension program and is designed to expand the college’s reach and influence. The pandemic forced the 109-year-old private college to shut many of its popular community-based programs.
“We are eager to invite the vast talent of creatives that live and work here to enjoy our working artist studios, fabrication labs, galleries, and performance spaces,” Cornish President Dr. Raymond Tymas-Jones says. “It’s an exciting step forward.”
A 2019 report from the city of Seattle found that “creative occupations” are outpacing overall job growth, with a median hourly wage of $30.76, the second-highest in the U.S. when adjusted for cost of living. Creative industries contribute 18% of Seattle’s gross regional product. Creative occupations include software developers, photographers, graphic designers, writers, and actors.
Classes include Making Tintypes and Ambrotypes, Explorations in Abstraction, Introduction to Laser Cutting for Sculpture, Beginning Talko Drumming, Live Sound Engineering, and Commercial Voiceover and Podcasting.
Classes are held evenings and weekends on Cornish’s main campus in South Lake Union and the historic Kerry Hall on Capitol Hill. They are open to those over age 18 and range in cost from $130 to $650. Financial assistance is available.
Information can be found at plus.cornish.edu.
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