LIKE all first-year Stanford students, Peter Kurzner is obliged
to study the arts. He has settled on a curriculum that includes courses
in political science and "theatre in the marketplace", as well as voice
lessons. “I considered going to Yale, which has traditionally been much
better at performing arts," he says. "But Stanford is really making a
push to raise its level."
It is indeed. California’s famous
innovation factory, which counts Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google,
Reed Hastings of Netflix, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger of Instagram,
and Peter Thiel of PayPal among its alumni, has discovered that arts are
the future.
“Stanford is aware that it’s educating leaders,” explains
Stephen Hinton, a professor of music and the director of the Stanford
Arts Initiative. “And leadership isn’t just about having technical
skills and economic savvy, but about having a broad range of skills.”
In
other words, Stanford wants its future Brins and Pages to know not just
how to code but also how to decode Mozart symphonies. From last
September, all undergraduates have had to take a compulsory class in
"Creative Expression". Among the 161 courses they can choose from are
Laptop Orchestra and Shakespeare in Performance.
The Palo
Alto-based university is trying to help answer one of the questions that
haunts our "knowledge society": where will new ideas come from? Many
successful start-ups are the result of their founders spotting gaps in
their own lives. But what if their thinking stretched far beyond their
daily horizon? “The labour market is a rat race, so you’re in a
permanent state of distraction,” notes Wiley Hausam, the executive
director of Stanford’s new Bing Concert Hall (pictured). “Art stops all
of that and allows creative ideas to emerge almost on their own.”
So,
in much the same manner that Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century
philosopher, developed ideas on his daily walks through Königsberg in
Prussia, Stanford students’ outings into the world of arts will—so the
university’s leadership hope—help them become more creative citizens. Of
course, not all undergraduates will jump at the opportunity to learn
more about Giacomo Puccini or Jackson Pollock. But, argues Professor
Hinton, in today’s society delving into unfamiliar areas is necessary:
“The pace of technology is such that the field you go into may become
obsolete, so it’s good to get used to stepping outside your comfort
zone.”
Indeed, according to Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, a senior
analyst at the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation,
“other universities are also realising that vocational training isn't
enough”. According to an
article by Vincent-Lancrin, Francesco Avvisati and Gwenaël Jacotin in the
Tuning Journal for Higher Education, arts graduates are more likely than others to be involved in product innovation.
Aalto University was launched in Finland in 2010 with the goal of creating a new science-and-arts community.
Stanford’s push also raises a question about the role of the arts in northern California as a whole. According to the
Bay Area Economic Research Council,
the 7.15m-resident San Francisco Bay area, with its GDP of $535 billion
(£328 billion), is the world’s 19th-largest economy. Yet even though
San Francisco has a respected opera house and world-class symphony
orchestra, northern California’s arts scene is small compared with that
of, say, London or New York. That’s something Mr Hausam wants to change.
"Stanford has been the catalyst of the Silicon Valley revolution, and
we want to have the same effect on the arts," he says. "The Bay Area has
the human and material resources needed to become the Florence of the
21st century."
The first step, Mr Hausam says, is to turn Palo
Alto into a city where artists live permanently. “In the next
three-to-five years you’ll see the effect,” he promises. “Arts will
fundamentally change our students, and it will change students who come
to Stanford. In five years I hope we’ll have a student body that
embraces the arts and artistic living.”
Stanford creating a new
Florence? Students and professors at Yale, which boasts highly respected
drama and music schools, might scoff at the thought. But the university
behind Google and Netflix has the muscle to make an impact in arts,
too. Imagine the potential if future Brins and Pages were encouraged to
nurture artistic interests. We’ll check back in five years.
