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 (classical, jazz, vocal), theatre arts (drama, musical theatre, theatre design), and visual arts.
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.
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.
Curriculum
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.
Classical Instrumental Music
Creative Writing
Culinary Arts
Dance
Drama
Entertainment Production Design
Jazz
Media Arts
Musical theatre
Visual Arts
Vocal music
Launched in the fall of 2011, NOCCA's Academic Studio is a full-day, diploma-granting attendance option. 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.
Notable alumni
Musician Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews
Musician Joe Dyson
Musician Sullivan Fortner
Musician Jon Batiste
Artist Gustave Blache III
Musician Terence Blanchard
Dancer Bella Blue
Musician and actor Harry Connick Jr. Novelist and poet Nicole Cooley Writer Lolis Eric Elie Musician Donald Harrison Actress JoNell Kennedy Musician Doreen Ketchens Actor Anthony Mackie Musicians Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, and Jason Marsalis Conductor Paul Mauffray Musician Paul Meany Musician Jeffery Miller Rap Artist 3D Na'Tee Musician Nicholas Payton Actor Wendell Pierce Musician Nick Sanders Musician Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah Filmmaker Phillip Youmans Musician Lucky Daye
NOCCA Foundation
The NOCCA Foundation is NOCCA’s nonprofit partner, providing supplemental funding for NOCCA and advocacy for its world-class program. Some of the Foundation’s more notable endeavors include: a Student Success Program that pays for students’ classroom supplies as well as fees associated with important summer training programs across the country; an Artists-in-Residence Program that brings more than 100 professional visiting artists into NOCCA’s classrooms each year; the capital campaign for NOCCA’s current home and expansion projects like Press Street Gardens; a wide array of arts classes for adults; and concert, gallery, and literary events for the community. The Foundation also oversees rentals of the NOCCA campus, making it available to arts organizations, individuals, corporations, and other groups.