Students in the arts are working together in greater collaboration as part of a new school merging seven disciplines from the Herberger College of the Arts and the College of Design into one collaborative school.
Wendy Craft, spokeswoman for the newly-created Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, said the institute brings together the schools of art, dance, theater, film and music, which were formerly a part of the Herberger College of the Arts, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and the School of Arts, Media and Engineering.
An advantage to the new institute is that each discipline is now a school of its own under the umbrella of the Herberger Institute, she said.
Linda Essig, director of the School of Theatre and Film, said the change was a positive one.
“It opened up some doors for some deeper collaboration than we’ve had in the past,” Essig said.
Students could benefit from an education that crosses all disciplines of art, she said.
“It will only enrich their learning. I think you’ll see a lot of new ideas developed,” Essig said. “The best ideas come from groups of people, not individuals.”
Kwang-Wu Kim, dean and director of the Herberger Institute, said he felt the cross collaboration between schools would better prepare students for life after graduation.
“Artists and designers, regardless if they are researchers, practitioners or scholars, all contribute to our understanding of how we adapt and grow in complex environments,” Kim said in a statement.
One example of the collaboration students will see is a class that would teach students from all aspects of digital media — including film, graphic design and other media arts — how to present themselves by creating a digital portfolio, Essig said.
The institute has already begun some collaborative projects and is planning more in the future, she said.
Kimberly Marshall, director of the School of Music, said her school was excited to be a part of the new institute and held a concert Sept. 30 called “A Celebration of Unity and Design” to honor the new merger.
“The concert was given as a way of celebrating the new institute and highlighting the way that other aspects [of art] can enrich music,” she said.
Music is often separated from the rest of the arts, so it’s nice to see it included in an arts institute, Marshall said.
“We’re unique in the country right now,” she said. “We’re the only institute that includes music.”
The music school is trying to discover ways to integrate music and art.
Marshall said it incorporated one link between architecture and music in the Sept. 30 concert by performing a song Beethoven composed for the opening of a building.
X-Square, a collaboration between the School of Art and the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, was launched Oct. 14 at the institute’s reception to inaugurate the new merger.
X-Square aims to set up an annual competition to create a public space outside Neeb Hall, Marshall said.
“We [are] hoping to have students with a lot of ideas about how to invigorate the space,” she said.
Other projects include the Arts, Media and Engineering project, SMALLab, and the School of Theatre and Film’s Performing Arts Venture Experience initiative.
The initiative also focuses on education and encourages entrepreneurship in all aspects of art in order to further develop creative opportunities.
Craft explained SMALLab as an educational project that utilizes digital media.
“It uses digital media to get kids up and out of their chairs to use the three-dimensional space to learn about sound, body movement and projection,” she said.
