For Parents + Educators

At Krannert Center, we’re devoted to making the arts accessible to everyone, and we’re particularly excited when young people feel the energy and positive benefits of experiencing the arts.

Our Youth Series performances, which occur annually at Krannert Center during school hours for over 9,000 students in preschool through grade 12, ignite the imagination of public and private school students as well as homeschooling families. Shared experiences of the performing arts are essential in nurturing the creative spark at the heart of every learning community. Students encounter work that speaks to their artistic intelligence and promotes cultural knowledge. Accompanying study guides invite students to experience their own creative agency through recommended classroom activities and to deepen their knowledge and understanding of artists and art forms. Programming selections are based on a desire for audiences to experience artistic excellence, a breadth of genres in the performing arts, and intercultural understanding and include artists from throughout the globe in a variety of genres each season. 

Krannert Center in Our Schools

Through Youth Series and other engagement activities, Krannert Center helps to bring the arts up close to students. Our partners in the Champaign and Urbana school systems help us identify artists who would make perfect ambassadors in their classrooms, and our engagement team crafts programs that focus on cultural awareness, diversity, community building, acceptance, and cross-national arts connections. For more information on these opportunities for your students or your children, engagement [at] krannertcenter.illinois.edu (please contact our engagement office).