Enriching Communities Through Arts Education at the College of Adaptive Arts
By DeAnna Pursai, College of Adaptive Arts Co-Founder & Executive Director
College of Adaptive Arts (CAA) is very proud and grateful to be a longstanding beneficiary of annual support from SVCREATES. This vote of endorsement has meant the world to our small and mighty arts college for adults who historically have not had access to a college education.
At CAA we believe that these adults have an incredible wealth of talent, ability, and community contribution capacity when people in the typically-developing world can create a safe, engaging, and creative outlet for their abilities to be optimally illuminated and capitalized upon. Since our first grant from SVCREATES, CAA has grown to cultivate artistic talents in more students and share the unique and delightful artistic talents of adults with special needs with more audience members.
CAA represents a unique model of adult service delivery. We allow individuals to channel their passion and achieve competency to the best of the individual’s ability in arts disciplines such as the fine arts, dance, theater, digital arts, and video/television, as well as in the academic disciplines of Communications, Science & Technology, School of Business, and Health and Wellness. Support from SVCREATES and other traditional arts funders has welcomed CAA and our students into the San José arts community with a huge and warm metaphorical embrace.
Our students have worked with CreaTV, winning an award in 2014 for best television series. Our community partnership with the City Lights Theater Company allowed CAA theater students to perform productions on the professional stage and conduct audition workshops with professional actors around the Bay Area. One of our students, Curtis Kitaji, recorded public service announcements for CreaTV and gave a speech in front of Mayor Sam Liccardo and City Council when CAA received a City of San José commendation in 2019 for our 10th anniversary. Curtis and his fellow classmates have benefited enormously from the esteem of performing their adapted productions on a professional stage, and being critiqued and coached by the actors at City Lights Theater Company. This past June, more than 15 artists for CAA showcased their fine arts creations at an exhibit called In Good Company hosted at the Gilroy Center for the Arts.
The pride these adult artists with special needs have felt by being included in the larger Bay Area artists community has made such a tremendous impact on them as learners, individuals, and community contributors. They desperately want to showcase the ways they can be successful, contributing citizens in the community, and CAA provides a robust and long-term platform that allows our adults to shine the lights on their authentic and breathtaking artistic abilities.
Access to arts matters to our diverse communities, and the arts make a difference in all our lives. The community served by CAA is no different.
DeAnna Pursai holds a Master’s in Education Policy Analysis in the School of Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an undergraduate degree in Elementary and Special Education from Purdue University. DeAnna was recently named a CNN Hero in April of 2022. DeAnna has been named an Architect of Change on the Maria Shriver blog and co-awarded the Delta Kappa Gamma State Distinguished Career/Professional Service Award with CAA’s Co-Founder and Dean of Instruction, Dr. Pamela Lindsay. DeAnna is active in the downtown Rotary Club of San Jose, served for three years as a board member, as the Chair of the Rotary Climate Action Committee, and as the Rotary mentor to the newly-formed Rotaract Club at San Jose State University. She proudly served six years as a board member of Christmas in the Park, and she is an active member in a vibrant Bay Area leads/referrals group called MyProGroup. She is big sister to Angel Ellenberger, who happens to have Down syndrome and is an exquisite actress, entertainer, and comedian. One of DeAnna’s bucket list items is to give a TED Talk on the subject of how to innovatively cast a wider higher education net to include adults with differing abilities who historically have not had access to higher education.
