< Return to Arts Page

The expansion of the arts into Noble Center, and the renovation of the Griffiths-Noble complex, offers us the opportunity to think about how we can best serve students and community through new spaces and through the critical, creative and performance work that will fill these spaces.

The master plan developed for Griffiths and Noble unites two buildings and helps draw together activities in the arts like never before.

Renovations funding during Momentum St. Lawrence include: the Peterson-Kermani Performance Hall and the Newell Center for Arts Technology, a new photography studio/lab, and accessibility improvements to extend use of the building. As all of the arts have become increasingly invested in digital technologies, this facility--equipped with lab, classroom, editing studio and showcase spaces--will become a media hub for our work, opening up an innovative, productive space for the critical and creative study of the relations between the arts, technology and society. We also have a new art studio, refurbishing the upstairs meeting rooms to create class and seminar rooms, and created four new hands-on teaching spaces for creative work in all three arts departments.

While most colleges and universities have separate spaces, and often separate buildings, dedicated to individual departments, we have chosen to intermingle throughout one larger structure. In our notions of space and use, we replicate our notions of what constitutes vital and engaging research, study and creative work at a liberal arts institution. We value cross-fertilization and collaboration among departments, among faculty and among students, and this is facilitated by the overall design.

A second and related feature of the master plan is that while some spaces are earmarked for particular departments, much of our real estate will be shared. While our previous spaces forced us to be accommodating, mobile, and flexible, we now see those traits as virtues, and envision a completed facility that gives us room to work amiably and collaboratively

Adapted from an essay by Assistant Professor of Music David Henderson and Associate Professor of Performance and Communication Arts Rebecca Daniels, first published in the University's newsletter Momentum.