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Mission & Vision

Arts for All connects the arts with disciplines across UMD and the broader community to unlock new ways of thinking, learning and creating.
100%
of UMD students have access to arts experiences, no matter their major
50+
different majors engaged in arts-based, interdisciplinary research
1,000+
arts exhibitions, performances, festivals, workshops and community events at UMD each year

 

What is Arts for All?

Arts for All is a campuswide, presidential initiative that partners the arts with the sciences, technology and other disciplines to develop new and reimagined curricular, research and experiential offerings that nurture different ways of thinking to spark dialogue, understanding, problem-solving and action. We strengthen and expand the University of Maryland's core arts disciplines—music, theater, dance, visual art, creative writing and design—while promoting interdisciplinary research. We bolster a campuswide culture of creativity and innovation, making Maryland a national leader in leveraging the combined power of the arts, technology and social justice to collaboratively address grand challenges.

The arts give us all a space to reflect, explore and connect–across disciplines and experiences. We are all creative, and at UMD, we’re shaping what it means to be an arts-informed university.

Craig Kier, Executive Director, Arts for All Professor, Voice & Opera and Conducting Ensembles

Mission

Our mission is to humanize the world’s grand challenges and to center people-based, creative processes as we work collectively to investigate and address the issues facing our region, nation and world.

  • We make the arts at the University of Maryland increasingly accessible to—and representative of—our entire community.
  • We cultivate a sustained arts-informed university in which all students, faculty and staff at UMD have meaningful creative experiences.
  • We work to ensure the arts are a central part of UMD, fully integrated into our teaching, research and within our community.
  • We leverage the community-building and community-sustaining power of the arts in advancing equity and justice.
     

Vision

We envision a world where the arts and design work alongside the humanities, sciences and disciplines beyond, to tackle our globe’s grandest challenges from climate change to racial injustice to inequitable development. A world where interdisciplinary teams are unafraid to embrace their own creativity and that of others. A world where a university walks alongside the community it serves, locally, nationally and globally. At the University of Maryland we are building that world by forging new partnerships between the arts and other disciplines.