Alabama School of Fine Arts

The Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) is a public, tuition-free partially boarding state magnet middle and high school located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, United States. It provides conservatory style and college-preparatory education to students in grades 7-12. Specialties The six specialties of the school are music, visual arts, theatre arts, creative writing, math and science, and dance. The largest of these is math and science with an enrollment of around 100 students, with the other departments being smaller portions of the student body. History The school began in 1968 with a group of Birmingham arts community leaders, James Hatcher and Peggy Beddow Cook, who acquired funding from Governor Lurleen Wallace to support instructional programs based in community arts agencies after school. The Alabama Legislature formally created the school with a resolution in 1971. The school was located at Samford University, with the dance program being located at UAB, but moved to Birmingham–Southern College in 1974. While there it was consolidated into five arts programs and a core academic program, staffed in part by the Birmingham City Schools. The school moved to its own temporary downtown Birmingham campus in 1976. At this time the private, non-profit Alabama School of Fine Arts Foundation was established to raise funding to build an all-new campus complex.