Blueprint for Action
How do we make the student arts organization ecosystem at Harvard more accessible, more cohesive, and encourage collaboration?
To address the gaps in communication, cohesion, and collaboration across student arts organizations at Harvard, this project produced two recommendations:Arts Involvement Fair
Sponsored by the Office of the Arts and institutional bodies at Harvard, an Arts Involvement Fair at the beginning of every semester would mirror the greater Harvard Undergraduate Activities Fair, but focus entirely on student arts organizations and opportunities. Interviews with student arts leaders and freshmen revealed a lack of centralized material and heavy reliance on word-of-mouth information, which perhaps contributes to the disparate nature of the student arts ecosystem. An Arts Involvement Fair, well-publicized and distributed through institutional means, would gather every student arts organization and provide freshman and interested upperclassman a way to survey the ecosystem and join organizations early on. Additionally, it would give students lacking background or experience access to opportunities in the arts normally only word-of-mouth and internal networks.Ideally, the Arts Involvement Fair would call on organizations from visual arts, theater, music, literature, arts publications, fashion, dance, performing arts, improv, ceramics, poetry, art history, art criticism, textiles, art museums, and more. Participation is voluntary, but as arts organizations worry about retention and generational continuity, the Arts Involvement Fair would provide a significant source of recruitment. Additionally, students arts organizations rarely gather and collaborate, and the physical proximity of the Arts Involvement Fair will hopefully foster a greater sense of connection and beloning across a community built on individual relationships.
Undergraduate Arts Assembly
In addition to fostering collaboration early, I believe the establishment of a gathering between student arts organizations leaders is vital. An Undergraduate Arts Assembly would bring together students art leaders from all registered arts organizations for the purpose of acting with coordination and intention. The gathering would involve open discussion regarding cross-organization and cross-discipline initiatives and events, including but not limited to the aforementioned Arts Involvement Fair. The Undergraduate Arts Assembly is also intended as a space for arts organizations with similar missions and interests to find each other, and for greater collaboration across leadership.Many of Harvard's arts organizations have been operating for decades, and have amassed a wealth of institutional knowledge and understanding. With an Undergraduate Arts Assembly, this knowledge can be disseminated and utilized by other student leaders, pushing forward arts at Harvard on the whole. The Undergraduate Arts Assembly would happen biannually to start in order to account for differing timelines of leadership transition and turnover. Student leaders who ascend to leadership positions in arts organizations would attend an Undergraduate Arts Assembly early in their tenure, encouraging collaboration and communication with the greater arts community early on.
The Undergraduate Arts Assembly would also be removed from institutional control. Organized by a collection of dedicated student arts leaders who are upperclassmen and familiar with the ecosystem, the Undergraduate Arts Assembly needs to be entirely student-run and student-led. Although the Office of the Arts contributes to and communicates with many student artists, there remains a large contingent of student arts leaders that are uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the OFA, and prefer to operate entirely in the student ecosystem. Additionally, the Undergraduate Arts Assembly will only address issues pertaining to undergraduate student arts involvement, and needs to center entirely around the unique and vital perspectives of involved students.
