A+D “Summit” Notes


Arts + Design Initiative Summit Planning Notes

Since the summer of 2015, ARC | Arts + Design has hosted a range of consultations as well as five “summits” attended by more than 100 key faculty, campus administrators and program staff to promote communication and coalition-building across multiple Arts + Design units. The below includes each of these meeting’s “notes”, and also a list of attendees. 


Arts and Design: Research and Creative Activity Summit

Wednesday, August 19, 1:00-5:00pm

Topics explored included:

  • Programming, including symposia, lectures and events
  • Incubation of faculty work and that of visiting/presenting artists
  • Artist Residencies, longer term stays of collaborating artists and scholars
  • Collecting and displaying archives of past programming, faculty publication and portfolios
  • Expanding Public Research and the Public Intellectual, with respect to thinking and writing outside of the peer-reviewed journal form
  • Envisioning campus Art and Design Labs, including varied forms of Making across arts/design disciplines
  • Collaborative Operations and on how the Initiative can support multi-unit programming planning, resource-sharing, grants, and calendars
  • Partnerships: claiming and framing arts/design collaborations with leading arts and civic organizations and universities, as well as the generation of thematic rubrics and keywords that organize our collective research program at Berkeley and help us to imagine a future

Meeting Notes:

Quick review of Arts + Design Initiative and how to frame, fund, and present multi-unit research. SJ notes that arts initiatives across the country are securing funding by framing arts and design within a broad vision, and that even though our campus is porous creativity, operationally we are not.

Bill Hanks, Director of the Social Science Matrix, with Matrix Associate Director, Mia Bruch outline how they created a platform for research:

  • Acknowledge that the social conditions of social science have changed since post war area including funding, tech, nature and scale of data, etc.  
  • Understand scale: about 500 social science faculty at Cal – just over half are in the division, the rest are diasporic
  • Think of form: ORU might not be best form for their goals
  • Needed to render visible what there is: Where are the practitioners? Who do they work with? How do you read a research landscape in order to understand its propensity for transformation?  
  • Their answer was to do their own own research and to create an administrative shell to  facilitate research.  
  • Today, the Matrix’s work and challenges include: updating continuous research, the research network graph and feeding the system information, trying to best render visible the invisible.

Round Table 1: What are keywords the inspire your research or research on campus:

Social justice; Racism; Pedagogy; Memory; Narrative/anti-narrative; Auditory engagement; Materiality / Fabrication; Material; Time – elasticity and compression; Interfaces; Political economy of art and design; Citizenship; Experimentation; Belief; Representation (visual to political); Transformation; History; Context and Framing; Immateriality / Abstraction; Interaction; Space; Imagination ; Discover; Access; Content Creation; Content; Transposition/Translation; Consumption; Consumption/Production/Reception; Individual /Collective creativity; Reception; Perception; History/Theory/Practice; Life Forms/Common worlds; Markets/Economies; Public Sphere

Round Table 2: What are the benefits of Visiting Residencies

  • Offer intensified experience. “Once in a lifetime experience.” Elevating the everyday of education.
  • Provide potential opportunities for the students (interns, studio/production assistantships, etc…)
  • Artists have a sense of the vanguard more so than scholars.
  • Strategic advantage:  much more flexibility/opportunities for diversity with residencies than permanent hires.
  • Artists have a way of exploding academic/institutional boundaries.
  • Bring in artists at different moments in their careers.
  • Residencies are a chance to build relationships that can be utilized later.
  • Visitors prompt convening of local relations.
  • Legitimate / Reinforce (to students) that what happens in the university has a place outside.
  • Reciprocity TO artists.
  • Residents provide opportunities for experiments/test cases.
  • ASSESSMENT NEEDED FOR EVALUATING RESIDENCY VALUE – learning opportunity.
  • External visibility and engagement.
  • Residencies leave a legacy – intangible and tangible (archive).
  • Visiting artists can incentivize/energize.
  • Value of asking artists to think about their work in context.

SJ asks the question: benefits of limiting potential residencies to interdisciplinary research/multi-unit projects? and is it better to do the best possible thing vs the thing that reaches the most people/disciplines?

Round Table 3: Internal Campus Residencies – Benefits, Cautions, Prejudices

  • Opportunity for research to be seen by those within existing network.
  • Opportunity for other departments to learn from your work.
  • Illustrates value of artist/scholars work that is honored currently (artist/scholars don’t currently get paid for on campus gigs).
  • Could be an advantage to have a physical space (for makers) that is accessible.
  • Micro/Macro – what is a macro residency (Rick Lowe) or internal micro residencies (with less exposure but more consistent access).
  • Opportunity to reward departments for engagement.
  • Distinguish between this and regular sabbatical or endowed chair positions.
  • Question: what is difference between internal residencies and a fellows group?  
  • Challenging ideas vs creating something – and the labor tied to it?
  • Question of residencies brings up question of application/review process – and maybe that is where interdisciplinarity comes in.
  • LABOR! –  What about strategic uses of staff for programming – across departments??
  • Saying yes to too many things.  
  • Need to learn from past programs – such as the goldman lecture series.
  • Space.
  • Too much demand for quantifiable outcomes – don’t discount the radically specialized.
  • The inviter should not make an assumption about what the residency should be.
  • Discourage quid pro quo across departments.
  • Variability within requirements (student pedagogy vs advancing a research question).

Round Table 4: The Future of the Arts Research Center working with the Arts + Design Initiative

  • ARC has been really effective in critical conversation/evaluation about art and it need a home somewhere
  • ARC helps structure/frame questions that are asked by others
  • ARC as public facing of arts research
  • ARC has been successfully project oriented. A commons opens up the possibility for less project-driven interactions.
  • Commons would have to have a physical space! {Seminar room for collaboration/maker’s space}
  • NEED to have a virtual commons as well
  • Hate to see ARC Fellows dismantled.  
  • If scholarship is considered creative then there is no reason why they the commons and center couldn’t be one.
  • Could the commons be used to point to external partners??
  • ARC not only as doing its own work but partnering with other sites (both internal and external)

Round Table 5: Outcomes from the day

  • Making art AND design important and visible to the campus community
  • Excited about the potential of the commons
  • Essential to create a hub/commons to help us all know what is going on
  • Excited about the matrix presentation
  • Potential for Cross-fertilization across campus
  • Incentives for this type of collaborative work
  • Rethinking around collaboration re: labor/resources
  • Must think about how Dwinelle annex can become an innovative and accessible space
  • Excited to demonstrate that art/design is a part of so many different disciplines through research

 

Arts and Design Website Summit

Tuesday, June 30, 9:00am – 1:00pm

Topics explored included:

  • Brainstorming about what relevant categories Berkeley could use to define our identity and understand what is distinctive about what we do?  
  • Discuss navigation systems and social media capabilities might we want from a large website that represents the vast array of activities on this campus
  • Think about best to represent our large art and design campus network without diminishing the unique brand and identity of each arts and design unit.

Meeting Notes:

Quick review of Arts + Design Initiative, goals and what an online platform/base might need to be.

Round the room discussion on challenges we’ve all experienced, including:

  • Attracting students and prospective students
  • Allowing students to communicate themselves
  • Standing out among competition
  • Getting 24 exposures needed to be “seen”
  • How to help public take a chance, move beyond comfort zone —-> value
  • Governance and ownership
  • Feeding the hungry [content] beast

Comments on site design/interface:

  • Responsive design is important
  • Design needs to represent diversity and multiplicity
  • Branding and website are connected
  • The website will be able to do some of the work of connecting and collaborating
  • The website can pull students to participate and to represent their departments
  • Emphasis on art as positive experience – how can website itself generate a positive experience – so user enjoys this experience then goes to see where an event happens or where to donate to Arts+Design?
  • What the initiative wants to do is redefine arts + design for education, culture, society, the country. To that end: the website needs to be part of a living thing.

Audience:

  • Audiences will include students, publics, alumni, faculty
  • The voice of the public and participation are hallmarks of Berkeley and things that play into events, education, research, connections, and archives
  • Instead of focusing on audiences, one group focused on Use Scenarios: internal and external audiences; Navigating through tactile, sonic, textual and visual senses
  • Multiple modalities (thinking about how a user feels, thinks, experiences) could be good for Berkeley.
  • Public facing could energize student participation, student stories are publicly compelling.

Questions and quandaries:

  • Do we want this to be the central hub for events happening on campus? or is this a local resource ? or is the emphasis on research? or on the impact of broader arts and design conversations? those types of stories need to be curated and developed.
  • Website is background for digital communication that happens through email and the website could support these communications. For example, Cal Performances contacts patrons by email then they go to site to select and purchase.
  • Problem of where/how to capture student stories
  • Berkeley is still not recognized for its incredible wealth of arts and culture that happens on campus, how to quantify and measure “awareness” or “reputation” ?
  • Changing awareness relies on engagement. For people to come to us we need to provide something they can engage with – interesting and meaningful interactions.

Looking towards the future (6 months); how can we improve outreach:

  • Form an editorial board in public affairs composed of people across the campus [to communicate about stories, etc.]
  • Calendar – create a centralized Arts Calendar and use it
  • Build audiences using social media – channels to engage and involve students (and others) before the website launch
  • Involve students because “they are our messengers”
  • Remember that our audience members are at all levels of engagement

 

Arts and Design Fundraising at Berkeley

Tuesday, May 19, 2015, 9:00-10:30 am

Topics explored included:

  • Look at the success of some of our peer universities have had in building up their arts profiles and facilities, and also recognize the need for better cross-campus harmonization of arts-related fundraising at Berkeley
  • Offer a forum to share our respective units’ current activities and initiatives that echo the goals of the campus arts strategy
  • “Round the table” discussion so all units are aware of what happens elsewhere on campus to spur meaningful collaborations

Summary from Kasia Allen:

  • Learned that the upcoming academic year will be a remarkable one for the arts and design on the Berkeley campus—with the opening of Jacobs Hall on August 20th, Cal Performances’ first ever Gala at the Greek on September 25th, the opening of the new BAM/PFA building on January 31st, and CED’s Circus Gala in March.
  • Meeting helped our group focus on finding an answer to the question: how our arts and design programs did in the previous Campaign for Berkeley? Cumulatively our programs raised $246M even before we had an Arts and Design Initiative.

 

Information Sharing Session: Students and Community Engagement

Thursday, May 7, 9:00-11am

Topics explored included:

  • With many community programs already functioning on campus, talk about what Berkeley can offer the Bay Area arts and design ecology
  • Ask how partnerships with our Bay Area arts community enhance the Berkeley student experience?
  • Discuss and learn about different K-12 programs, internship and mentoring programs, community fellows programs, service learning programs
  • Look to better coordinate arts-based opportunities for student engagement

Meeting Notes:

Quick review of Berkeley Connect, Magnes Collection, B the Arts, CED Undergraduate Opportunities, Film and Media Opportunities (Labs, Internships), Community Grant Programs, Cal Performances Student Programs, PSC Student Opportunities (CREATE), American Cultures ACES Program, L&S Unit Grants including student opportunities, among others.

Campus Units want more engagement with Undergraduate Populations and mentoring/engagement opportunities:

  • Follow-up: How to mentor this population? How to create a sustainable funding source for mentoring?TAS Funding?
  • Model: B the Arts created a course for teaching students how to teach, look to Lisa Wymore’s course Dance Pedagogy for example.
  • Question: Can this fulfill the major requirement?

Other models to learn from:

  • PSC: Students mentoring students in engagement programs
  • Chancellor Public Fellows: Graduate Students run partnership Fund
  • ACES: Student, Faculty, Community Partnership is glue – tied to research and engagement
  • URAP: Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program
  • SAFA: Student Ambassadors for the Arts

Commitment to Schools/Ongoing Partnerships:

  • Craig N asking the crucial questions: How Many Schools, what are the long-term goals, what are continues touches
  • Cal Performances, B the Arts, CREATE, ASCU all have ongoing partnerships, some funded long term, some faced with short term funding issues
  • Within CED, faculty tend to hold all the partnerships within studio class

Pain Points to Note:

  • Database clearinghouse: students need to know what’s out there
  • How can we develop long lasting relationships?
  • How to get students to pass down programs, institutional knowledge to new students?
  • How to engage transfer students?
  • Transportation and getting students on- and off-campus
  • How to re-emphasize interdisciplinarity (design, arts, business, making, etc)

Looking towards the future:

  • Welcome week! Connect with Dean of Student Affairs
  • 3 weeks of getting your “bear”ings – being on campus: meet students, your RA, the campus, and all opportunities

 

Information Sharing Session: Tickets and Culture Passes

Monday, May 4th, 11:00am-1:00pm

Topics explored included:

  • Thinking through how we can enable Berkeley students to experience more art
  • Review culture pass programs at peer universities, and efforts to allow students to experience campus and off campus arts performances (tickets, et al)
  • Review different UC Berkeley ticketing systems, asking, what is working well already, what might need to enhanced or created?

Meeting Notes:

Quick review of Undergraduate Initiative, ticketing processing at the BAMPFA and also the PFA individually, Cal Performances, Cal Rec, TDPS, Music, among others.

Ways each unit tickets or engages students in events:

  • BAMPFA: Galleries are free to students
  • PFA: Students get member discount to PFA ($35  season pass, per semester). They also outreach to film studies, art departments (depts subsidizes)
  • Cal Performances: Student Subscriptions (15% discount) and a Flex Pass (Vouchers, 4 seats at $10, with 2 passes that don’t have to students
  • Cal Rec: All Programs are free except with UCB ID Men’s Football and Men’s Basketball (more interested in filling seats, not selling seats), they also have a Freshman Free Program
  • Music: All majors get free access to all events, then: $5 non-majors, $12 staff and $16 all public
  • Grants (Mellon especially) covers a lot of tickets for Cal Performances and BAMPFA

Pain Points to Note:

  • TDPS: Curricula Ties!
  • Having Professors pay for events, and then seek reimbursement
  • Cal Performances: Lists of students for performances from professors
  • BAM wants to intersect with large campus initiatives

Looking towards the future:

  • Creation of a campus ticket culture pass
  • Run pilot program: do students want this?
  • Social Aspect: How to get someone to go alone? How to get a group to go out together? Work on survey from arts groups on campus, give prizes for participation?
  • Creation of an Events pass? Partner with Sports too?
  • Look into the average price for events ($5-15 for student tickets, sometimes everything is free)
  • These events have to be part of social currency (chits system)
  • Current students, for culture pass, would need to have a validation sticker (especially for a museum pass program – this is an issue with Card Office)

With special thanks to the following people who participated in these summits or who consulted on ongoing projects for the Arts + Design Initiative:

Summits Convened by:

Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts and Design and Director Arts Research Center; Hadidi Professor, Rhetoric and Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies Department 

Lauren Pearson, Associate Director, Arts Research Center

Katherine Mitchell, UC Berkeley Facilitator

Kate Mattingly, TDPS PhD Candidiate and Arts + Design Initiative Graduate Student Assistant

Lyndsey Ogle, TDPS PhD Candidiate and ARC Graduate Student Assistant

 

Deans and Senior Administration:

Anthony Cascardi, Dean Arts & Humanities, College of Letters and Sciences

Carla Hesse, Executive Dean of Letters of Sciences

Julie Hooper, Associate Vice Chancellor, University Relations

Bob Jacobsen, Dean of Undergraduate Studies, College of Letters

Irene Kim, Assistant Vice Chancellor, University Relations

Catherine Koshland, Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education

Bob Lalanne, Vice Chancellor of Real Estate

Lawrence Rinder, Director, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive

Matias Tarnopolsky, Director of Cal Performances

Jennifer Wolch, Dean of the College of Environmental Design

 

Faculty and Key Staff (Alphabetical by last name)

Laura Abrams, Senior Producer of Artistic Residency and Community Platforms, Cal Performances

Alice M. Agogino, Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Kasia Allen, Senior Development Director, University Relations

Rica Anderson, Education Programs Manager and Teaching Artist, Cal Performances

Richard Andrews, Associate Director, Center for New Music and Audio Technologies

Rob Bailis, Associate Director, Cal Performances

Weihong Bao, Assistant Professor, Film & Media; East Asian Languages & Cultures

Natalia Brizuela, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese

Liz Baqir, Ticket Services Manager, Cal Performances

Lucinda Barnes, Senior Curator, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive

Brian Barsky, Professor, Computer Science

Sandra Bass, Director, Public Service Center

Karen Bennett, Associate Curator of Education, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Benjamin Brinner, Professor, Music; Director, Center for Jewish Studies

Julia Bryan-Wilson, Associate Professor, History of Art

Edmund Campion, Professor, Music; Director, Center for New Media & Audio Technologies

Peter Cavagnaro, Media Relations Manager at University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Christopher Celona, Director of Ticket Operations and Customer Service, Cal Athletics

Carroll Christman, Senior Development Director, L&S Arts & Humanities

Renee Chow, Professor, Architecture and Urban Design; Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, College of Environmental Design

Jim Coates, Departmental Manager, Music

Mary Cocoma, Director of Alumni and Public Relations, College of Environmental Design

Catherine Cole, Professor and Chair, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Claudia Cohan, UREL Principal Gifts/Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

Cindy Cox, Professor and Chair, Department of Music

Margaret Crawford, Professor, Architecture

Marni Davis, Communications & Development Manager, TDPS Department

Abigail De Kosnik, Assistant Professor, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Apsara DiQuinzio, Curator, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive  

David A. Dornfeld, Professor, Mechanical Engineering; Director, Jacobs Institute

Nadia Ellis-Russell, Associate Professor, English

Karen Feldman, Associate Professor, German

Kathy Geritz, Film Curator, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive

Lynn Geske-Morgan, Provosts Office, California Hall

Peter Glazer, Associate Professor, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Ken Goldberg, Professor, Computer Science; Director ATC

Nancy Goldman, Head, PFA Library and Film Study Center, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive

Sherry Goodman, Director of Education and Academic Relations, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive

Louise Gregory, Director of Development, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive

Suzanne Guerlac, Professor, French

Susan Hagstrom, Director of Undergraduate Advising, College of Environmental Design

Gary Handman, Public Services Coordinator, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

William Hanks, Professor, Anthropology; Director, Social Science Matrix

Holly Hatheway, Director, Arts and Humanities Division, Bancroft Library  

Lyn Hejinian, Professor, English

Susan Hoffman, Director of Osher Life Long Living

David Kim, Department Manager, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Sabrina Klein, Director of Artistic Literacy, Cal Performances

Lauren Kroiz, Assistant Professor, History of Art

Elizabeth Kovats, Director, Berkeley Roundtable on Applied Innovation and Design

Wil Leggett, Production Manager, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Nina Lewallen-Hufford, Editor, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive

Ken Light, Professor, Journalism

Jen Loy, Assistant Director, Local Government and Community Relations, UC Berkeley

Michael Lucey, Professor, French; Comparative Literature

Michael Mansfield, Undergraduate Student Affairs, TDPS

Angela Marino, Assistant Professor, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Avi Martin, Marketing Manager and Web Content Curator, Public Affairs

John McKee, Dean of Development & College Relations, L&S

Melissa Nidever, Assistant Dean of College Relations, College of Engineering (not in person)

Greg Niemeyer, Director, Berkeley Center for New Media

Katelyn Nomura-Weingrow, Assistant Director of Marketing and Art Programs, Berkeley Art Studio & ASCU

Susan Miller, Consortium for Interdisciplinary Research

Susan Moffat, Program Manager, Global Urban Humanities Initiative

Louise A. Mozingo, Professor and Chair, Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning; Urban Design  

Maura Nolan, Faculty Director of Berkeley Connect

Michael H. O’Hare, Professor, Public Policy

Lyndsey Ogle, Graduate Student, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies Department

Eric Paulos, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Berkeley Center for New Media

Quelani Penland, Hertz Hall Events Manager, Music

Michele Rabkin, Associate Director, Berkeley Connect

Victoria Robinson, Director, American Cultures

Alix Schwartz, Director of Academic Planning, Undergraduate Division, UC Berkeley

Andrew Shanken, Associate Professor, Architecture

Carla Shapreau, Lecturer, Berkeley Law

Nora Silver, Director of the Center for Social Sector Leadership, Haas

Jeffrey Skoller, Associate Professor, Film and Media

Mary Ann Smart, Professor, Music

Sarah Sobey, Director of Development, Cal Performances

Keryn Sovella, Development Assistant, Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Francesco Spagnolo, Curator, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

Teresa Stojkov, Associate Director, Townsend Center for the Humanities

Stephanie Syjuco, Assistant Professor, Art Practice   

Alan Tansman, Director, Townsend Center for the Humanities

Marlena Telvick, Development Director, Journalism

Sophie Volpp, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature & East Asian Language and Cultures

Lara Wolfe, Program Manager, Berkeley Center for New Media

Lisa Wymore, Associate Professor, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Wen-hsin Yeh, Professor of History/Berkeley Global Campus