 Its creation was driven by Virginia Uldrick, a music educator and district official who had served as the first director of Greenville's Fine Arts Center arts magnet school begun by Greenville District Superintendent J. Floyd Hall in the 1970s.Uldrick, along with businessman Arthur Magill, first proposed the idea of a statewide summer arts program to Governor James Edwards in 1979; the request was denied based on a Governor's School summer program already in place at the College of Charleston.A second proposal with the support of Uldrick, Magill, and Hall was submitted in 1980 with Governor Richard Riley issuing an executive order creating the program in October of that year.