CEDFA Summit 27:
The Discipline of Discovery

The Center for Educator Development in Fine Arts (CEDFA) invites you to join us this summer to investigate the process of discovery at the heart of all creative practices. Together, we will dig deep into the experiences of inspiration and wonder, cultivate collegial connections, and share the joy that sparks authentic student engagement in our classrooms.

From June to August, CEDFA will host Summit 27—Fine Arts: The Discipline of Discovery. The Summit consists of a series of interconnected, self-paced, online learning sessions for art, dance, music, and theatre educators and administrators across all grade-level bands. Featuring exciting new content and dynamic presenters, each session aims to be engaging, hands-on, and interactive.

During Summit 27, we will champion the process of discovery as uniquely human. We will explore howthe fine arts shape the critical cognitive, intuitive, and expressive skills necessary for invention. After all, strengthening creative minds in young people is the essence of the work of all fine arts educators. At Summit 27, we will push our practices farther together, hone our creativity, and share the strategies, tools, and inspirations that strengthen our teaching methods, our programs, and our communities.

Through hands-on activities disseminated in each session, we will explore key practices that make minds fertile for creative discoveries—imaginative play, daydreaming, solitude, intuition, openness to new experiences, mindfulness, sensitivity, and turning adversity into advantage. 1 We will step away from our screens, engage with the world, and then come back together to share our discoveries and connect.

Four multidisciplinary anchor sessions weave the Summit together. Each of these anchors are followed by deep dive learning courses that are discipline specific across art, dance, music, and theatre to help drill further into the content and application.

Summit 27 sessions include the following:

• Anchor Session 1: Practicing Creative Discovery

  • Deep Dive 1: Transformative Journeys into Artistic Discovery

• Anchor Session 2: Cultivating Openness to New Experiences in the Classroom

  • Deep Dive 2: Designing Creative Playgrounds

• Anchor Session 3: Shaping Campus-wide Collaboration

  • Deep Dive 3: Blue Sky Idea Lab—Reinvent One Aspect of the Campus through Fine Arts

• Anchor Session 4: Building Communities around Passion, Purpose, and Invention

  • Deep Dive 4: Discover the Deep Need for Fine Arts in Your Community

Join us as we embrace the perpetual process of discovery that is the heart of fine arts learning.

Reignite your inner artistic flame!

Online learning sessions will be open from June 15–August 15, 2026!