Located at 7415 South East End Avenue in the Grand Crossing Neighborhood, Art in Motion is a grade 7-12 charter high school that provides innovative arts opportunities and experiences in visual arts, music, digital media, dance, creative agency, and literary arts. It was founded in 2019 in partnership with Emmy, Grammy and Academy Award-winning artist, actor, author and activist, COMMON, New Life Covenant Church Southeast, and non-profit organization Distinctive Schools.

The adaptive reuse program re-envisions an existing single story 120,000 SF industrial building, built as an ice plant in 1917 and converted into a paper factory in the 1930s, into a vibrant learning environment. The interior is organized around a central circulation spine—Main Street—that offers access to all spaces and links to three internal courtyards. These courtyards introduce daylight and landscape into the building, emphasize transparency, and support programming in theater arts, visual arts, and dance, acting as extensions of these program spaces. The program combines traditional academic classrooms—seminar rooms, small group “huddles” and a central studio space—with creative arts spaces, including a performance space, a recording studio, a broadcast studio, a dance lab, and a visual arts lab. Outside, a former loading dock is re-imagined as a new landscaped entry plaza, where students will gather for drop off, recreation, workshops and also outdoor performances.

Contractor: UJAMAA Construction
Structural Engineer: Enspect Engineering
Civil Engineer: TERRA Engineering
M/P Engineer: dbHMS
E/FP Engineer: Primera Engineers
Landscape Architect: Site Design Group
Lighting Design: PolyMath Design
Theatre/AV/Acoustics: Charcoalblue
Food Service: Edge Associates