ABOUT ARTS ON EARTH
Arts on Earth’s mission is to integrate artistic modes of thinking and being into the life of the University to promote the full human capacity for creativity.
Until very recently, clamor for teaching the arts in the schools has typically subsided at the gates of the research university. There, students are expected to “put away childish things” and focus on the education and training that will prepare them for their chosen career paths.
But engagement with the arts during the university years is crucial – and not only because of the arts’ broadly humanizing influence. Undergraduate engagement with the arts enhances students’ ability to handle ambiguity, to analyze and respond to complex problems, and to make creative intellectual leaps – cognitive capacities that are both inherently rewarding and increasingly rewarded in the twenty-first century workplace.
Arts on Earth envisions a university that, by treating creative process as an indispensable mode of learning, actively supports students, faculty and staff in the rigorous cultivation of their full human capacity.
As the home of top-ranked professional arts schools as well as of outstanding research across the spectrum of scientific and scholarly disciplines, the University of Michigan brings an unusual set of strengths to this ambitious experiment.
What does Arts on Earth do?
Arts on Earth’s major commitment currently is to stimulating and supporting interdisciplinary collaborations involving the arts.
Such collaborations might address complex problems that originate outside traditional arts disciplines – from, for example, medicine, engineering, the social sciences, and public health – and determine how knowledge and skill originating in the arts might be applied. Thus, for instance, scientists exploring Alzheimer’s disease or depression might make discoveries through collaboration with artists unavailable through any other route.
Interdivisional collaborations could just as well address problems that originate in the arts – such as how to create animated characters whose movement is generated by sound, or sculptures that are large, transportable, and safe for outdoor use.
Collaborations also arise between artists in different disciplines – the dancer who needs a visual artist for set design, the architect wanting to incorporate original music into a project.
AoE is taking concrete steps to foster such collaborations:
- Sponsoring interdivisional, arts-driven “learning studios” each fall. In November, 2007, the topic was Arts & Minds. In November 2008, the topic will be Arts & the Environment: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.
- Funding ongoing creative work and research on topics explored during the fall learning studios. Six outstanding projects [PDF] emerged from Arts & Minds.
- Partnering with staff at the University’s Digital Media Commons to develop an online “collaboration portal” enabling artists, researchers, and scholars across the university to find each other.
- Hosting social events designed to bring potential collaborators face-to-face.
- Actively exploring the development of a robust new infrastructure at U-M that will provide stable support collaborative work involving the arts and other activities to fulfill AoE’s mission.
Arts on Earth is also taking direct steps to modify undergraduate education.
Neuroscientific research reveals that through the teen years to about age 25, critical elaboration and organization of neuronal connections takes place, a shaping process that will largely determine how the brain operates for the rest of its life. Students who are equipped, during this period, to understand and direct their own creative process are much more likely to have the confidence and skill to become innovators and risk-takers in any field of endeavor they choose. Arts on Earth is exploring different ways to help undergraduates make the most of this remarkable period of intellectual growth.
Arts on Earth is the home of a new course, “Creative Process,” designed to help undergraduates recognize, articulate, and develop their creative impulses. Funded by Provost Teresa Sullivan through the Multidisciplinary Learning and Team Teaching Initiative, “Creative Process” will be piloted in Fall 2009.
Arts on Earth is also exploring the development of a student community on U-M’s North Campus that would provide co-housing for students from all five North Campus units (Music, Theatre & Dance; Art & Design; Architecture + Urban Planning; Engineering; and Information). Students would live and learn in an arts-infused environment without “knowledge silos” – an experience that would provide unparalleled support for creative thought and second-nature skills for working across traditional disciplines.
Arts on Earth proposes to make the University of Michigan an exemplar of the public research university that systematically employs the extraordinary power of the world’s arts to maximize the originality, creativity, and cultural understanding of its undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty.
It is a work-in-progress that will evolve in unforeseeable ways. Sign up to receive occasional e-mail updates about new developments.