CC gets $490,000 arts grant

Colorado College has received a $490,000, three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation to support new approaches to the arts.

The college plans to develop a curriculum that reinforces its interdisciplinary initiatives, with an emphasis on film and new media.

College officials said the grant will also allow the college to explore the implications of digital communication and new media for the liberal arts by focusing on the creative arts. In particular, the college will be able to examine more thoroughly how the arts can tap other liberal arts disciplines for content and how new technologies can foster connections among diverse art forms.

In order to better understand how the arts and digital media affect students’ approaches to other disciplines, CC hopes to revise some of its current classes and develop new courses, focusing on:

• Separate courses connected through a common project.
• A semester in the arts, including creative and critical courses and ending with a festival featuring students’ work.
• Co-taught courses such as New Media: Performance and Installation, which bring theory to bear on practice and reinforce the logic of collaboration among disciplines.

The nearly half-million-dollar grant also will allow the college to enhance staffing by:
• Hiring post-graduate fellows who have completed their MFAs or doctorates and whose interests and training span disciplines.
• Hiring a film and/or new media scholar for a tenure-track position.
• Inviting specific film makers to campus for courses in basic and advanced film making and for special subjects related to production and emerging digital technologies.
• Bringing visitors to campus who support and advance the program’s creative, new media sectors, while also working with students on creative projects.

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