CalArts 2030
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Steven Lavine: We gave you and Don the fairly unreasonable task of leading longterm planning only months after you had arrived at CalArts.
This past fall the Institute launched a two-year planning initiative under the title “CalArts 2030”—the most comprehensive, forward-looking such effort in the school’s history. To be finalized by the end of the next academic year, the plan will take shape against a backdrop of the ever-accelerating economic, technological and demographic changes that are giving rise to new forms of artistic and social expression, and radically affecting the structures of higher education. Drawing on inputs from across the CalArts community, the 2030 plan will address the key questions that are likely to face the Institute and its young artists over the next decade-and-a-half. How can CalArts best serve the needs of students even as those needs continue to evolve in the fully-globalized arena of creative practice— where artists and other innovators are now producing work across borders and disciplines with unprecedented mobility? How should the school, as a now-mature institution, maintain and proactively build on its global leadership in arts education? Leading the Planning Task Force, in close cooperation with President Steven Lavine, are Provost Jeannene Przyblyski and Vice President and cfo Don Matthewson, both of whom joined the Institute last year. This March, CalArts magazine listened in as Lavine, now in his 25th year as CalArts president, and Przyblyski discussed CalArts 2030—the broader context from which it is emerging, some of the key issues under consideration, and the outcomes it aspires to achieve.
Jeannene Przyblyski: CalArts is a culture, with habitual practices that have grown up over time. Obviously Don and I have had to immerse ourselves in this culture in order to be effective in the planning process. On the other hand, the excuse to be curious and questioning, which is what newness gives you, is a positive advantage in this case. We can bring a freshness an outsider would provide, but, as participants in the community, we have a much greater personal commitment than, say, a consultant. SL: I’m fond of saying that CalArts isn’t only a college; it is a cause. The attitudes here are those of a driven community committed to the continual renewal of the arts as a way of thinking about who we are and what this life is for. Yesterday I met with an mfa graphic design student, Isaac Berenson, whose thesis traces a lineage from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College to CalArts, each with its own sense of separateness and cause. We’re the only one of the three that stabilized enough to have an ongoing life. The challenge is how to balance the passion and directness that goes with the sense of cause with the stability that lets you survive changes in the economic and social climate. JP: As an art historian, I’ve approached CalArts as a community as well as a history and archive. In our planning meetings so far, we’ve talked about revisiting Walt Disney’s founding vision, with different arts coexisting and informing each other— of taking that vision up anew, and seeing what parts are most relevant to us today.
Spring 2013
Planning Timeline
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Data Collecting
The Planning Task Force develops internal and comparative data reports; hosts focus groups; and elicits feedback from across the CalArts community.