School of Creative and Performing Arts, Calgary, AB

What’s in a name? What, precisely, is a “school”? When I was invited to become the first full-time Director of the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary as of January 1st of this year, I was excited by the potential for innovation in this designation. More robust than a department, more agile than a faculty, a school is space defined and driven by the solidarity and collaboration of its members. It is a site of exploration and discovery only possible—indeed, only imaginable—in a context of thorough interdisciplinary exchange. It is a space of innovation and experimentation evoked—indeed, provoked—by the particular preoccupations and ravenous appetites associated with artistic practice and inquiry. It is a laboratory, where one not only learns but also develops the ways and means of a lifetime of learning. In all these ways, we are a school.