Imagination is essential to society because without imagination, we can't envision what does not yet exist. And without being able to imagine what doesn't exist, we can't imagine a future different from the present.
Art is how we as a society speak to each other across disciplines, geographical and cultural boundaries, language, difference and conventional discourses; it is how we access our individuality and collectivity. It is how we tell our stories.
At Columbia University School of the Arts, we take the importance of the arts to society as a core mission. Educators strive to prepare students to be fearless and confident in their approaches to art-making and in their research and scholarship so that they might be able to engage such important global concerns in their own work.
Columbia University School of the Arts awards the Master of Fine Arts degree in Film, Theatre, Visual Arts, and Writing, as well as an interdisciplinary program in Sound Art that leads to an MFA in Visual Arts. The School also offers a Master of Arts degree in Film and Media Studies. It maintains a strong commitment to undergraduate education in the arts by offering majors in Creative Writing, Film and Media Studies, and Visual Arts that lead to the Bachelor of Arts, awarded by Columbia College and the School of General Studies.
I think the thing that comes out is a voice—is an original voice—and that's what an artist has to give to the world.