The Student Creative Arts Council, a subdivision of the Creative Arts Council, was recently established to generate better relations between the CAC and students and to increase artistic awareness at Brown.
The CAC is devoted to promoting interdisciplinary collaboration in the arts on not only a campus level, but on national and international levels as well. The SCAC was created to give students a voice in its proceedings.
"It's a bridge from the undergraduates to the head (of the CAC)," said SCAC member Laini Nemett '06. "Students are there to express what we need."
The SCAC consists of two representatives from each sector of the creative arts on campus, including the departments of music, visual arts and theatre, speech and dance, as well as the Program in Literary Arts.
"The point is to be interdisciplinary," said SCAC member Corey Solinger '05. "Right now we have a lot of VA concentrators," she added, saying that some programs, such as the Program in the Literary Arts and the Department of Music, are currently underrepresented.
Among its responsibilities, the SCAC plays an active role alongside the CAC in conducting the Mini-Grant program, which sponsors student art projects each semester.
Nemett said the SCAC is interested in developing a Web site and an arts festival to promote artistic awareness on campus. The Web site would boast a forum for artists to communicate with each other, as well as a calendar listing upcoming arts events on campus and in the community, she said.
"Things don't get out as much as they should, and people don't know about a lot of cool things that are happening," she added.
The arts festival would be held over the course of a weekend and include such events as musical and theatrical performances, as well as a forum for artists to sell their work. "I really want to see the arts festival next semester," Solinger said. "I think that it could really bring the campus together in the arts. We have a lot of really good artists here, and I feel like they don't get seen a lot."
Through its affiliation with the CAC, the SCAC receives funding and other resources that are not available to other student groups. Nemett said she hopes to join with other groups to generate an even greater awareness for the arts on campus. She sees the SCAC as a "blanket group" for other art groups on campus.
"It's a really amazing thing that could happen for the school," she said.
