University at Buffalo is establishing a creative arts initiative that is designed to provide artistic outlets to students, by directly connecting them with high level artists and art institutions throughout the region. For years Buffalo has been at a disadvantage, with a major UB campus being situated so far from the urban core. There is an undeniable disconnect between the students and thriving urban art institutions. In order to mend the artistic tear, the Creative Arts Initiative has been established to reconnect creative art students and faculty with local and visiting art professionals.
What we are seeing here is a a four-year, $1 million investment into an art program that will lead to myriad exhibitions, collaborations, performances, public conversations and new course development, both on and off campus.
“UB is proud of the Creative Arts Initiative and excited about all that will arise from it,” says Charles F. Zukoski, UB provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “We have a strong commitment to supporting expressions of creativity across the full spectrum of arts on-campus and in Buffalo, and providing students with opportunities to interact directly with creative work and artists. A dynamic, creative culture stimulates imagination and empathy, strengthening and enriching our entire university and community.”
“No one has done anything like this before. I’m very excited with the opportunities presented by inviting established artists to UB on a regular basis, working here, utilizing our facilities and spending time with our students,” says Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor, and co-director of the program along with James Agee Professor of American Culture, and SUNY Distinguished Professor David Felder, Birge-Cary Professor of Music. “We want to work more closely with the people at the center of arts activity in our community and involve our students more closely with them.”
“UB has a history of bringing artists and scholars to campus that is so important,” says Felder. “But we’re talking about something more sustained and much wider in its circulation by inviting artists to stay here after a performance or exhibition, to work and meet with students over the course of a few days, a whole week or maybe an entire semester. We’ll have people of demonstrable world-class import at UB, interacting with our students on a human-to-human level. Lives can be changed by that kind of contact.”
The first round of applications for visiting artists will be considered this spring, according to the professors.
“We’ll be evaluating these requests for proposals just as a university press evaluates a manuscript before making a decision about publishing,” Jackson says. “We’ll involve our board and will be asking people in various academic departments for their input as well.”
Already a new class is being offered that will be in place for the spring 2016 semester. The class is called Arts One, and will act as a bridge between undergraduates and the art world around them – artists, venues, etc.
“This course is deliberately designed to put students in direct contact with artists and arts organizations in a very topical way,” Felder says. “Each semester will be very different based on what’s happening in Western New York.”
“The idea is to expose students to a wide range of artistic performance and creative activity in a way that doesn’t currently exist,” Jackson says. “Students might, for example, attend a reading by a visiting poet. Or we might invite the poet to discuss the process of writing a poem or poetry in general. It could just as easily involve drama, fiction or dance.”
“Bringing great artists to the university and having them interact with students and community members opens all kinds of creative possibilities,” Felder says. “The arts, like all spiritual pursuits, fills a part of the soul that is deeply important to our humanity.”