University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA)

Winston-Salem raised nearly $1 million in a two-day phone campaign to land this school — and that tells you something about the city before you ever set foot on campus.

America's first state-supported arts conservatory, UNCSA was established by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1963 and opened here in 1965. The idea came from composer Vittorio Giannini, who brought it to then-Governor Terry Sanford and enlisted the help of author John Ehle to make it real. Giannini became the school's first president and shaped its founding vision before his death in 1966. The school joined the University of North Carolina System in 1972 and took its current name in 2008.

Five schools — Dance, Design and Production, Drama, Filmmaking, and Music — operate under one roof, which is rarer than it sounds. Students get in by audition and portfolio review, not application essay. Faculty are practicing artists. The roughly 1,380 students enrolled here generate more than 300 productions, concerts, and film screenings in a single year. That output reaches the public, and it reaches industry: alumni include Jada Pinkett Smith and Danny McBride, and the school's drama and filmmaking programs have drawn consistent recognition from major entertainment trade publications.

Winston-Salem calls itself the City of Arts and Innovation, and UNCSA is where that claim gets tested. The Stevens Center, a downtown performance venue the school owns and operates, anchors the relationship between campus and city. This isn't a school thatExists in isolation — it runs programming outward, into the community it was built to serve.

Go to a performance. Any performance. The students here are training for professional careers, not rehearsing for some future life. This is the life, happening now.