Artist and musician Ravi S. Rajan is on a mission to promote innovation in the many ways the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) incubates a community of artists.
CalArts uses portfolio-based admissions, hosts a number of community arts partnerships and develops students who are using art to put a “cracked world” back together, said CalArts leaders in a visit with Diverse.
Now, the institution’s leaders are taking a moment to reflect on the institution’s 50-year legacy and future, while boldly making the case for equal funding in higher education that includes the arts and humanities.
In a time where there is an ideological power struggle, “the arts make people get closer,” said Rajan, CalArts’ fourth president. “It’s an amazing thing when you give students a makerspace. It’s an amazing thing when you give students instruments. It’s the same part of human potential.”
The Santa Clarita-based, private school offers students access to more than 70 degree programs in visual, performing, media and literary arts. Walt Disney’s vision for CalArts as a “radical space” for artists is still evident today in the ways alum and students’ art speaks truth to power or challenges the status quo, leaders said.
When students arrive at CalArts, they find an openness to the arts, Rajan said, and they are not limited to the confines of a canon of work. “What is a canon?” Rajan asked.
This openness “transforms the way they understand culture” and the world, Rajan said.
