Arts MSU
The arts are essential to vibrant, thriving communities—MSU included.
Arts MSU is a strategy that moves creativity to the center of university life by integrating the arts into our educational experiences, our research activities, our outreach, and our campus culture.
Guided by the belief that the arts are essential to a vibrant university community that is resilient, inclusive, collaborative, and globally minded, this strategy is committed to advancing the impact and amplifying the presence of the arts across campus. Arts MSU provides a strong framework for the integration of arts into MSU’s land-grant mission, strengthening our campus through innovative and interdisciplinary practices of discovering, connecting, exploring, and remembering.

Values
Creative inquiry and expression are integral to advancing knowledge, the cornerstone of the university’s mission. Arts have a transformative impact on learning, providing the tools to experience the world through different perspectives, engage with the most pressing issues of our time, and explore what it means to be human.
In laying the groundwork for Arts MSU, a planning committee of community and campus leaders conducted focus group interviews with MSU students, faculty, staff, administrators, and arts stakeholders in Greater Lansing to learn more about why the arts mattered to them. This collaborative campus community process shaped the values for Arts MSU.
Inclusive: Connective by nature, arts on campus will be accessible, relevant, and intentionally support the diverse communities we serve.
Transformative: Woven into the fabric of university life, engagement with the arts will catalyze empowering and lasting change to our campus culture.
Committed: Guided by a deeply rooted sense of social responsibility, arts on campus must be dedicated to advancing the common good.
Risk-taking: Arts on campus will be bold and experiment with ways of addressing issues and ideas, modeling and encouraging the risk-taking inherent in learning.
Globally Minded: Reflecting the international focus of MSU, the arts promote exploration and engagement with diverse modes of understanding and expression.
Impactful: The arts merge the critical with the creative, providing the skills necessary to approach 21st century problems with empathy, resourcefulness, and an openness to think differently.