Vanderbilt is in the midst of launching its Creative Campus initiative—an effort led by the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy and faculty, staff, and students from across campus—to make creative engagement and expression a core aspect of campus life and the Vanderbilt experience.

What do we mean by creative engagement? When we’ve asked students in the past, they immediately respond that creativity relates to “art” or “performances.” But when we asked students when they felt creative, we get a different answer. Students feel creative when they are working to develop a new service-learning project, coordinating an event for their student organization or dorm, inventing a new product or experimenting in the lab, or creating new digital media or playlists to share with others on-line—as well as when they are developing or performing new artistic productions.

These moments--when exercising your curatorial voice, when using your unique passion and creative energies to mobilize or serve others, when bringing together diverse skill sets and perspectives to produce something novel—are when one becomes immersed in creative engagement and expression.

We want to raise the potential for these moments to happen throughout your Vanderbilt experience—both in and out of the classroom. We also want to challenge your thinking about your potential to harness and develop your creative talents and expressive capabilities here at Vanderbilt. In the next four years, how might you connect your creative spark with public leadership, your community, and your work?

The Vanderbilt Creative Campus initiative seeks to place creativity at the center of campus life – integrating art, media, design and creative expression into the curriculum; transforming campus spaces through public art and performance; connecting faculty and students across disciplines, with a special emphasis on the links between artistic and scientific practice; and building community, both on and off campus, by using art and creativity to animate conversations, reach across cultures, and bring people together around heritage, public service and difficult dialogues.