Make the Case for a
Creative Campus
toolkit.creativecampus.org
A program of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters
This resource was developed through the generous support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
The 2004 American Assembly meeting of
education leaders probed connections between
higher education and the arts and resolved to:
• Encourage research on the impact of arts in
education
• Create demonstration projects to integrate the
arts on campus
• Educate the higher ed community about the
value of the arts as catalyst to build community
and advance campus values
Conference papers: http://creativecampus.org/docs/cc_american.pdf
14 Creative Campus Experiments
With support of the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters
(APAP) Launched 14 Creative Campus experiments to make the arts central to academic life:
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Cal State University - Long Beach, Carpenter Performing Arts Center
Cuyahoga Community College
Dartmouth College, Hopkins Center for the Arts
Hostos Community College of the City University of New York, Hostos Center for the Arts
and Culture
Montclair State University, Peak Performances
Ohio State University, Wexner Center for the Arts
Penn State University, Center for the Performing Arts
Stanford University, Stanford Live
University of Iowa, Hancher Auditorium,
University of Kansas, Lied Center
University of Michigan, University Musical Society
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lied Center for Performing Arts
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina Performing Arts
Wesleyan University, Center for the Arts
Creative Campus website: http://www.creativecampus.org/about
23 Research Universities Committed to
Support Arts Integration Education Projects
• Investing $80,000 to create a national
network +
• Leading campus have established
taskforces to elevate and integrate the arts
and creativity across campus. Examples
include:
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Harvard
University of Michigan
Texas A&M
University of Alabama
> Creative Campus Caucus final report
> Arts Task Force reports: Harvard, University of Michigan, Texas A&M, University of Alabama
University thought leaders hail the
importance of the arts to teaching creativity:
• Creative Campus activities can “re-enchant” the
campus”
– George Ritzer, Distinguished Professor University of Maryland
• “We want to educate the whole person”
– Michael Roth, President, Wesleyan University
• We “bring an awareness to all types of
creativity…”
– Jedediah Wheeler, ED, Arts & Culture programming
Montclair State University
> Excerpt from Ritzer’s Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics
> Wesleyan President, Roth, speaks at Arrival Day 2011, Arrival Day 2012
> Wheeler speaks about goals
Creativity is Currency
• Employers are demanding creativity and
• Creative skills are required in all high value
21st Century Jobs
• IBM’s 2010 Global study of 1500 CEOs
identified Creativity as the most crucial
factor for future success
> IBM study press release
Arts-based inquiry deepens learning
and student engagement:
• Experience in the arts boosts academic
achievement for 99.9% of students studied
• Sandra S. Ruppert of Arts Education
Partnership holds that creativity prepares
all students for success in the global
economy
> Champions of Change report, James Catterall
> Ruppert report “Creativity, Innovation and Arts”
Photo: © 2012 Elizabeth Long Lingo
Commonwealth University’s Nancy
Lampert’s research shows that:
• Arts education enhances students’
disposition to think critically and
• Arts students have higher scores in truth
seeking, maturity and open mindedness
than non-arts students
> Studies in Art Education (2006): 215-228
Scholars believe the arts foster
scientific success:
• Purely academic skills are not sufficient to
train a person to do scientific work
• Creative work requires the entire range of
abilities (accessed through interdisciplinary
learning)
> Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology article
The majority of successful scientists
value the arts:
Scholar Robert Root–Bernstein reports that most successful scientists –
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Have been artists and
Have understood the value of arts for scientific education, thinking and
creativity
Examples include:
– Desmond Morris, the Oxford zoologist who is also a professional surrealist
painter;
– Roger Penrose, the Cambridge physicist whose tessellations have transcended
even Escher’s;
– Paleontologist Mary Leakey and Nobel Prize winner, chemist Dorothy Hodgkin,
who both began as professional illustrators; and
– Nobel Prize winner, Roger Sperry, who complemented his studies of brain
function by creating high-quality ceramics and sculpture.
> Leonardo Thinks online article
To adapt to global change, we must
nurture the creative impulse:
Fostering –
• Cognitive flexibility
• Inventiveness
• Design thinking, and
• Non-routine approaches to messy
problems
> Kuh &Tepper article in The Chronicle of Higher Education
The arts on campus can:
• Drive innovation
• Nurture resilience and
• Support experimentation
> Heath et al article in Champions of Change
Photo: © 2012 Elizabeth Long Lingo
The arts on campus encourage civic
dialogue and problem solving:
• Bridging town and gown
• Uniting and igniting the social landscape –
such as the Syracuse Connective Corridor
• Engaging students, faculty and community
around difficult divisive issues, such as –
– The Dartmouth Class Divide project and
– Cal State’s B-Word project on Censorship
> Syracuse University’s Connective Corridor website
> Dartmouth’s Class Divide project video
> Cal State Long Beach’s B-Word project website and video
Colleges Can Nurture the
Creative Class:
The symbiosis between arts and education
on campus is a powerful catalyst for
developing “the Creative Class”
Ellen McCulloch-Lovell article in The Chronicle Review, Richard Florida article in Washington Monthly
Teens rank the arts as high as
medicine as a future career:
Teens future career interests (top five)
Medicine
17 percent
The Arts
17 percent
Engineering
14 percent
Science
9 percent
Business
8 percent
> Report on 2012 survey by Junior Achievement
Campus Arts Options Attract
Outstanding Students:
Princeton University’s President’s report
states “The arts are also critical to the
University’s ability to attract outstanding
students. With increasing frequency, the
most academically gifted prospective
students have deeply felt commitments to
some aspect of the arts.”
> Link to the report
Participating Universities tracked
student and faculty engagement:
• “This course changed my life” – student,
Creative Thinking course, Montclair State
University
• An annual Common Moment for incoming
Freshman unifies the Wesleyan campus
> Creative Thinking final report 2012
> Feet to the Fire project website
California State University, Long Beach,
unified its commuter campus with:
High impact collaborative activities around
the censorship theme – engaging every
member of the university community
multiple times outside of classroom settings
> B-Word website Lessons Learned
Number of times students participated in Cal
State’s B-Word Project activities outside the
classroom setting:
The Arts on Campus help create
Educational Goodwill:
Research at Northwestern University
identified intangible assets – educational
“goodwill” – as paramount to attracting
students
> Working paper
Creativity plays a pivotal role in
academic success:
A model of a holistic approach to engaging
students in the performing arts is shown in
this diagram–
> 2013 Dartmouth College report by WolfBrown
Creative Campus initiatives offer:
• Creativity centered views
• Cross campus platforms for scholarship &
engagement
• Integration of performing artists
• Opening up of new vistas
• Fundamental knowledge advancement
> WolfBrown Creative Campus evaluation report and Tepper/Brown white paper
Creative Campus project highlights:
The B-Word project unified the California
State University, Long Beach campus and its
community around an important
contemporary issue.
> Article about B-Word project sustainability
Wesleyan paired scientists and artists to
address climate change:
Pam Tatge, Director of Wesleyan’s Center for
the Arts, noted – “We not only taught
scientific data, we gave students a
heightened and embodied awareness for
that science that led to deeper engagement
and knowledge.”
> Feet to the Fire websites and video
Montclair State University helped
students develop Creative Muscle:
Its interdisciplinary team developed the first
campus-wide course on creative thinking
> Montclair summary, final report and video
Begin a Creative Campus project
with an audit of campus assets:
“Universities will follow the example of
American cities in recognizing the arts as a
key asset,” John Vaughn, EVP, American
Association of Universities
> Report of Interdisciplinary Task Force, AAU, October 2005
How to Design a Creative Campus?
• Map campus cultural assets
• Identify curricular collaborative
opportunities
• Create inventive pilot projects
• Evaluate and assess impact
> Creative City Network of Canada’s Cultural Mapping Toolkit
> Toronto Artscape’s Introduction to Cultural Asset Mapping
Creative Campus: A powerful platform
for scholarship & engagement:
“The Creative Campus projects … put history,
music and the liberal arts into the
conversation where economic and material
concerns tend to dominate.”
– Holden Thorp, outgoing chancellor at University of North Carolina; incoming Provost at
Washington University/St. Louis
> Report of the Art Innovation Steering Committee UNC Board of Trustees
> Arts North Carolina messaging research
Creative Campus: A powerful platform
for scholarship & engagement:
“The magic of art can carry us to a different
place, and we find ourselves at home among
strangers…we leave with the sense we have
been changed.”
– Nancy Cantor, former Chancellor, Syracuse University
> Nancy Cantor keynote address 2009
Make the Case for a Creative Campus