A blog for the CCA community

Today we’re announcing the Project Form: Visioning Extravaganza - and we want you there!  We WANT to hear from you and we NEED to hear from you.  Many of you have participated in the work generated by Project Form through on the spot interviews, the ongoing blog, and Post It brainstorming sessions.  Now this is the opportunity for a select number of students, faculty, admin, and trustees to further discuss and help create the vision for the future of CCA.

WHO:   YOU - Current undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty, and trustees.
WHAT:  An important strategic planning event.  IDEO is facilitating an event called the * Visioning Extravaganza.*  This will be an inspiring event where members of CCA’s community come together to help form the vision of CCA for the next five years.  Lunch and refreshments will be served.
WHEN: Saturday, January 24th - From 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
WHERE:   CCA’s San Francisco Campus, The Nave.

Please RSVP no later than 11:00 pm on Thursday, January 15th, by emailing vp-studentaffairs [at] cca.edu and providing the following information:

NAME:
MAJOR or GRADUATE PROGRAM:
CLASS LEVEL:
CELL PHONE NUMBER:
DID YOU TRANSFER TO CCA?
YES!  I WILL BE IN THE NAVE PROMPTLY AT 11:00 A.M. AND CAN STAY UNTIL 5:00 P.M ON JAN 24th.

If you are a faculty or staff member or trustee, please RSVP by emailing Barbara Jones at bjones [at] cca.edu.

Thank you in advance for helping to make CCA a stronger an even more exceptional institution.  If you have any questions, leave us a comment on the blog with your contact info and we’ll get back to you promptly.  We look forward to seeing many of you on January 24th!

We began these virtual brainstorm sessions with the idea of Dream Big, where we asked about how CCA might awaken a sense of promise in all its students, faculty, and admin. Closely linked to this idea is our next and last theme, “Expect Greatness”. After all, dreaming big is about creating change, being inspired and inspiring others. In order to execute on these dreams, however, we, as a collective, need to be not just good, but great. We need to be world-class.

We all have our individual strengths and weakness, so in this pursuit of the big, how might CCA encourage all of us and give us the individual support and help to fulfill our potentials? In moments when we are struggling, how can CCA and we as a community help and encourage each other? An idea to establish programs of peer mentors and advisors, pairing up undergrads with grads, freshmen with seniors, and/or first year grads with second year grads has been suggested – what do you think about this? What else can be done to support each other to be great? And in moments when we are excelling, how might we recognize those bright stars in each other? What does great look like and how could CCA recognize that? CCA can only be a good as its community members, and feedback and open discussion is crucial in order to stimulate our own progress. So what CCA do and what solutions can be put in place to encourage more constructive and actionable feedback from the community?

We’re hoping Project Form is the first step establishing this dialogue, but we hope to make this conversation sustainable. Tell us how we could make it so.

So how might CCA optimize for best fit?

Now let’s take a step back from the future exploration we’ve been embarked on and take a look at the reality that surrounds us. It’s all well and good to discuss and speculate about CCA’s future, but the truth is we must start at where we are in order to make that future happen. We must build upon our current assets and remedy current issues in order to achieve the future that we hope for.

So today’s theme is “Mind the Gap”. Yes, the reality is that there is a clear gap between expectations and what can be realistically offered. There are basic needs of the community that CCA can better meet, and many have been mentioned on this blog already, such as more frequent faculty feedback, or mentor relationships between students, or more support for CCA’s craft heritage, or even more green and social spaces for informal hanging out. What other relatively “easy” wins do you think CCA could engage in? And how should CCA prioritize these problems and devise solutions that can be acted upon when resources are limited? Ideally, we as the CCA community will have a say in what kind of care should be applied to what kind of problems. How can we make our voice heard and help CCA hear it?

And then comes the question of how to execute on these solutions. CCA is what it is, and there is great untapped potential within our walls. How might we leverage existing assets in creative ways, and work with what we have to achieve what we want? How might we set smart and appropriate expectations for what we can do now in order to do what we want later?

How can we better communicate and then together remedy issues with current assets?

It’s a New Year - Happy New Year to all! It’s actually a particularly appropriate time to talk about the next theme we’d like to invite you to explore – “Nothing to Fear”. This is a time when we look forward to a new year, new beginnings, and resolutions abound. Here at CCA in particular, we want to be a part of a place where “things happen”, where we can be a part of something new and fresh. We want to feel free to experiment, and be rewarded and supported by CCA for the risks that we take in our pursuit of creative excellence. We want to feel as if there is nothing to fear.

So how might the CCA, and we as a community, support each other in our pursuit of the new and emerging? How might CCA create the right conditions for creating and making new things, and simultaneously reward fearlessness and experimentation? What are these new “things” that we can explore? We’ve talked about sustainability and more community-focused projects - what else is new and emerging that we as a community can be gently steered toward exploring?

Innovating and taking chances on the unproven is also a scary thing. In order to reach out and take risk, we also need to feel like there’s a safe haven to return to if those risks don’t pan out. Can CCA be that place, where we are free to fear nothing, but also have the support of a soft landing should we fall? Solid communities are a great way to feel that support and bonding – is there a way that CCA can foster and build communities around emergent themes and interests? What emergent themes and interests could those be?

So how might we nurture innovation and emergence at CCA?

It’s been a little slow on this blog as both the Project Form team and all of us in the CCA community take a short breather, but now that we’re all full from our holiday meals and re-energized, let’s ramp up and get back up and running!

We’ve got a couple more themes to explore, and elements of quite a few have already been brought up in the discussions we’ve been having on this blog.  In this post, we’d like to explore the concept of “All for One”.

Among the CCA community, we all use such a wide range of extremely diverse tools – from paints, brushes, and charcoal, to laser-cutters, table saws, and sewing machines, to advanced software programs coupled with sophisticated hardware.  Some are time-honored and traditional methods that date back for centuries, and others are newfangled and very recent technologies.  Unfortunately, this contrast means that we sometimes judge each other based on the tools we use, discounting the larger connection to the creative process.  Creativity is an organic and open activity, with tools as enablers, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that when we’re focused on our own individual creative processes and using the tools we know best.  Even mundane programs like PowerPoint can be an enabler of creativity – David Byrne anyone?

How can we better understand the value of different methods, both old and new, and help each other find and work with them?  There are so many unforeseen combinations of styles, materials, and disciplines – how might we encourage this merging and blending?  More cross-discipline projects and courses is one idea that’s sprouted up – what else could we do?  Another element to ponder is CCA itself.  We’ve been exploring CCA’s future for several months now, but we can’t and shouldn’t discount our history as a fine arts and crafts institution.  So how might we honor and harness CCA’s history and heritage, while simultaneously adapting to and embracing new technologies and tools in our creative evolution?

So how might we foster, celebrate, and share a love of all tools of making?  How can we support all for one – all tools and techniques for our one love of creativity?

Here at the CCA, it’s “Chic to be Unique.” This theme revolves around our unique personalities and talents here at CCA. We are all strong individuals, drawn to CCA by some commonality and equipped with our own talents, skills, and experiences, and we want to be honored for that and the benefits we bring to the school and community. After all, diversity breeds richness–we need to work together to cultivate the many cultures that live within our institution.

So let’s ask ourselves how might CCA better support and recognize our uniqueness and diverse personalities? How can the different needs of, for example, a graphic designer, writer or MBA student be addressed and respected by CCA without sacrificing one for the other? And how might we support each other in this recognition of our uniqueness? Do you think CCA is diverse enough in knowledge and expertise within our student body, staff, and faculty? If not, how can we encourage more diversity and bring this to the forefront of what CCA stands for? And unique people need many inputs–we need to know what’s new and fresh and inspiring to keep us going. How can CCA better expose us to those new ideas? Is there a way for CCA and those within cultivate the many cultures that permeate the spirit

How might we be like the one-eyed squirrel–unique and proud of it?

The idea of school spirit and connections within the CCA community certainly sparked some good conversation in last week’s “We Are Family” theme, and now let’s expand upon the idea of connection a little farther. This week, let’s explore the idea of “Inside/Outside” and how to make the boundary between those of us inside the CCA community and those of us outside more fluid and lively.

Those of us inside the school desire both protection and exposure to the outside world, and those outside look inward for more connections. For example, in the research, many students expressed anxiety about what will happen after graduation. So how might CCA provide students with more exposure or tools to find the opportunity best suited for each student’s needs and skills? And how could CCA help alumni connect more frequently or deeply with current students, and vice versa? What about the fact that we live in such a vibrant and energetic place–are there ways that CCA can help us better leverage the resources of the Bay Area? For faculty and staff, are there ways that CCA can help you keep abreast of what’s going on in your field of expertise in order to enhance your own learning experience and gather insights that you can pass on to the students and others?

How might we better enhance this lively boundary between inside and outside?

We looked outward in the last theme, thinking about how the CCA could help connect its students with the outside world and dream big. Now let’s look inward and reflect on the world that lives within our campus walls. What links us all now and in the future is that we are a part of the CCA family. What does this  CCA family look like?

This week, let’s ask ourselves - How might we as a community be stronger, more united, and better connected with each other?  How might the CCA give us tools to aid in our search for authentic connections here on campus? Do you think school spirit exists here?  If not, what can be done to build a cohesive identity and make us proud to be a part of the CCA and show it to the outside world? We now live in a highly networked world, with technology as the great enabler.  What tools do you currently use to connect with others and how can we use them to build connections among the whole CCA community?

There is also a wealth of knowledge and resources that we all possess, and yet that pool is not easily shared and offered up within the greater community.  In the discussion surrounding the “Dream Big” theme, one commenter suggested a carpool sign-up/forum from campus-to-campus for late-night studiers, and in another discussion surrounding “Howart’s or the Lord of the Rings“, a suggestion sprouted up for more cross discipline classes and projects.  Do you think these suggestions are good ideas and would you participate?  What other suggestions do you have to bind us all closer together?

How might we all become a stronger CCA family?

Imagine the CCA as  a place of dreams, where imagination reigns free, exploration without constraints is encouraged, and we as students have at our disposal the tools we need to change the world, just as we want to.  We all carry within ourselves a strong sense of promise and there are messages and thoughts and ideas that we want to share with the world in hopes of impacting and affecting it.  That’s what makes us different from other art schools - we look outward and want to engage with society and society’s problems.  Think about the bikes that populate our campus - we are a bike culture, exposed and open to the world as we move.

We are at the CCA to dream big.

And we don’t just want to dream big, but we want to DO big.  What can the CCA do to help us achieve these goals and pursue our passions for causes and change?  How might we make the CCA itself an example of the changes we want to see in the world?  And what are those changes?  What about the communities around us, in Oakland, in San Francisco, in the Bay Area as a whole - should we better engage with the environments that surround us and if so, how could we do that?

After all the student research projects, the stakeout sessions on campus, feedback from this blog, and many behind-the-scenes interviews with key stakeholders, the core development team is starting to hone in on opportunity areas for the CCA’s growth, which is very exciting! The team met the Friday before Thanksgiving for a synthesis workshop and several themes emerged that will be shared here on the blog over the next couple of weeks.

As these themes are presented to you and the rest of the CCA community, we’d like to start brainstorming together via this blog on how to support and build upon these themes with ideas about what CCA (and each of us individually!) might do in these areas.  Another discussion topic is your feedback about the themes themselves.  Do they seem like the right ones?  Are there other themes you’d like to see added? Do you have examples of schools, companies or other places that do this really well and might be an inspiring example?

The first theme will be posted on the blog by the end of the week, so get those brain juices ready!

Below are some photos from the synthesis workshop for your viewing pleasure: