One of the most striking developments in education today is a renewed emphasis on the arts. According to research published by the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, students in elementary and middle schools with an intensified arts curriculum score significantly higher than their peers when tested for imagination, creativity, and risk taking.

There are many reasons for this. The arts foster creativity. They encourage ways of knowing that complement skills in other fields and enlarge students' visions of the world. The arts teach visual and cultural literacy: how to master the relentless flow of images and sounds that increasingly dominate students' experiences. They emphasize originality in the face of tenacious and unresolved problems. They provide the improvisatory skills necessary to navigate a world of rapid change.

The ravishing beauty of a Bach partita or the meditative grandeur of a Ming Dynasty landscape opens our lives to experiences beyond our own. The arts allow us to see across cultures, around boundaries, beyond conventions.

In short, the arts change the way we think about the world. Art and education are co-partners in the great work of human awareness. They teach us more than how to master data: They teach us to think critically, to live vigilantly, to find the horizon wherever we look. This is what a first-rate liberal arts education is finally about. Not information, which is endless, but consciousness, which is limited and precious.

And yet there are no accepted models for bringing the arts into the heart of the curriculum and integrating them with other fields of study. This is the challenge of the Stanford Arts Initiative: to create arts programs so forward-looking, and so tailored to Stanford's strengths, that the arts work hand in hand with other disciplines—from the humanities, sciences, and social sciences to law, business, medicine, and engineering—to prepare our students, in exemplary fashion, for the world that awaits them. If we are successful, Stanford will have fundamentally reimagined the role of the arts in a 21st-century education.

The arts already enjoy a strong presence at Stanford, with nationally ranked programs and world-class faculty. The university as a whole has a distinguished tradition of entrepreneurship, experimentation, and collaboration. The task before us is to create innovative educational programs, new curricular opportunities, and arts-rich student experiences. Our goal is to create a culture of creativity across the entire university.

The Arts Initiative focuses on four primary areas:

• Enriching Student Life
• Strengthening Core Arts Departments
• Creating New Programs and Expanding Partnerships
• Building World-Class Arts Facilities

By focusing on these four areas, we hope to expand and deepen the presence of the arts on campus. Our purpose is to produce students who are inventive in their lives and critical in their thinking—students with the vision to shape a world filled with challenges and surprises.

Now is the moment. Stanford has embarked on a historic campaign. The Stanford Challenge addresses complex global challenges by seeking fresh solutions and educating thoughtful leaders. The Arts Initiative is an integral part of this undertaking.

Our agenda is ambitious. Our goal is transformative. Noted choreographer Merce Cunningham said in an interview at Stanford, "I make dances so that I can see things that I have never seen before." The arts teach us how to see, and in the process they teach us how to remake what we see into something better. Please join us.

	Jonathan Berger Director, Stanford Institute for   Creativity and the Arts The Billie Bennett Achilles   Professor in Performance in the   Department of Music
	Bryan Wolf Director, Stanford Institute for   Creativity and the Arts Professor of Art History The Jeanette and William Hayden   Jones Professor in American Art and   Culture

Discover more about the Arts Initiative in action on the Stanford StoryBank.

Stanford on iTunes U offers a wide range of Stanford Challenge–related digital audio, including programs about Engaging the Arts and Creativity. Requires iTunes. More >>