Experiences
Enhance Your Experience
Beyond the stage and galleries, we offer opportunities for people of all ages to expand cultural awareness and deepen understanding through the arts. These events—many of which are free—illustrate how learning, engagement, and discovery are at the heart of our mission.
Participate in events tailored for different ages and abilities, like:
- workshops with visiting artists
- activities in schools and with local organizations
- lectures and Q&As
- master classes
- hands-on experiences
- community celebrations
- and much more
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Arts and the Virginia Tech Experience: Atlas Vernier
The arts are an essential part of a complete education. Students of all ages benefit from artistic learning, innovative thinking, and creativity. Arts education — including dance, music, theatre, media arts, literature, design, and visual arts — is an essential element of a complete and balanced education.
The arts help shape the Virginia Tech experience for students in many ways.
Atlas Vernier is a lifelong musician and didn’t want to lose their connection to music when they came to Virginia Tech to study engineering. Joining the Marching Virginians (pictured above) provided an artistic outlet for Vernier and became one of their most treasured university experiences. Now a graduate student studying industrial and systems engineering, Vernier is entering their sixth year as a Marching Virginian and has found it complements their academic experiences and research interests.
“You have everyone who’s from all these different realms of study,” said Vernier. “You have architects alongside physicists, alongside musicians, alongside engineers. A lot of the dynamics that exist inside the band, they only work because we have different backgrounds.”
Different perspectives and approaches, Vernier explains, only enhance the band experience. This was also true in the classroom and working on research teams, where they found inspiration collaborating with artists, designers, and historians. Now a graduate research assistant for the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT), they can clearly see the contributions the arts add to Virginia Tech’s research landscape.
“There are research projects that would not happen, would be impossible, and you’d never see if you just locked a bunch of engineers into a room. You need to have this element of the arts — you need to have storytellers and historians.”
Vernier’s appreciation of humanity, arts, and culture has informed their problem-solving methods.
“I knew that I have a very different approach to solution-finding and systems-thinking because I have these other experiences that inform the way I interact with things and the way that I knew other people interact with things,” Vernier said. “The way we design and the way we choose to have those interfaces really changes when you consider who is going to be using it.”
In the classroom, research lab, data center, studio, residence hall, and all spaces in between, student life at Virginia Tech is infused with the arts.
“Our students here at Virginia Tech embrace the arts in so many important ways — taking part in student a cappella groups, leading the XYZ Gallery, or being part of step dance clubs or the many thriving cultural groups for visual arts, theatre, and music,” said Ruth Waalkes, associate provost for the arts and Moss Arts Center executive director. “They gravitate to those opportunities because it is important to have those outlets as human beings. It is an important, essential, part of who they are, and also how they build their own community. It’s how they understand and express who they are as individuals, learn to collaborate, and develop leadership skills.”
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K-12 ProgramsA critical part of a child’s education, arts experiences cultivate empathy, expand world views, create human connections, and enhance creative problem-solving skills.
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Virginia Tech StudentsWe bring world-class artists and performers to campus and host a huge variety of events each year. Student engagement is at the heart of our programming.
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Virginia Tech Faculty and StaffIf you’re looking for ways to boost your syllabus, revitalize your programs, and create exceptional learning experiences for your students, consider collaborating with us.
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CommunityWe bring arts to the community and lift up and invite people to examine the beauty, complexity, and diversity of our world.
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Itraab Arabic Music EnsembleA project of Moss Arts Center, Itraab is an ensemble of Virginia Tech students, faculty, and community members who learn and perform Arabic music.
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"In the Moment: Artists and Their Work"Celebrating and elevating our local and regional artists, this online talk series provides an opportunity to meet notable creators of Southwest Virginia.
BANDALOOP teaches students how to soar
Did you know that during their trips to Blacksburg, many of our visiting artists participate in a full roster of outreach activities? Take a peek behind the scenes at some of these events!
Performers with BANDALOOP worked with dancers from Virginia Tech and Radford University on the principles of dancing on vertical surfaces while suspended from above in a vertical dance workshop offered by the Moss Arts Center.
Monuments by Craig Walsh
An ethereal, site-specific outdoor projection installation by artist Craig Walsh, Monuments celebrated unsung community members who impact the New River Valley region.
Upending traditional expectations of public monuments and the selective history represented in our public spaces, these unforgettable images projected onto towering trees demonstrated the profound importance of individuals from our community.
