Celebrating the Visual and Performing Arts 

One of our goals at OSB is to provide and promote the tangible benefits of art education, museum visits, and art-making for our students who are visually impaired. Students also participate in performing arts through chorus, bell choir and partnerships with local programs. 

Art in the Classroom

All of our students have access to a high-quality arts education in the classroom. At OSB, the art process is a tactile, multi-sensory experience. Touching different mediums and textures - which can mean working with clay, making quilts and collages, and even finger painting with scented paint - allows the student who is blind, visually impaired or deafblind to explore through touch or smell. Students have many hands-on opportunities to create their own artwork, which develops physical and cognitive skills, stretches their imaginations, and gives them another means of communication. Tools and techniques are adapted so that everyone can participate in art projects.

Music and Performances

Each school year our auditorium is filled with thunderous applause and standing ovations thanks to our annual Winter and Spring Concerts, planned, hosted and performed by Overbrook's Music Instructor, Kasey MacAdams, and the Overbrook Choirs. In Concert Choir, students in Secondary and STRIDE Programs learn diverse repertoire while developing their musicianship and performance skills. Select Ensemble performs more advanced choral repertoire, plus the addition of instrumental accompaniment such as piano, bell choir, body percussion and auxiliary percussion.  Music is, and always has been, a big part of OSB’s history. In fact, the annual student holiday concert is over 100 years old!

OSB students greatly benefit from the therapeutic qualities of music. For many students, music improves gross motor skills like coordination and rhythm, increases language skills, develops spatial awareness through movement, and improves listening and following directions. In addition to developing an appreciation for all types of music, OSB music classes help students develop a mode of self-expression and encourage positive expressions of feelings.

Art Partnerships

Overbrook partners with arts providers to offer experiences like classical guitar lessons and specialized art projects. OSB has partnered with ArtReach and Magic Gardens to create a mosaic that hangs in our rotunda. ArtReach also connected OSB to an opportunity for our students to perform with the Philadelphia Ballet Company (formally the Pennsylvania Ballet Company). Organizations like Musicopia, Music Works, the Philly Pops, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Amaryllis Theatre, and Art Matters, have played a valuable role in strengthening the instructional and pedagogical expertise in OSB.

Through external partnerships with organizations such as Philly Touch Tours, the Main Line Art Center, the Barnes Foundation, and the Van Gogh Museum, OSB students can take part in verbal imaging and touch tours which allow them to see art in their minds’ eyes - and demonstrate that there are many ways to experience a work of art.