Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Our college is heading into our busiest season in our final stretch of the spring semester, and we work on completing a draft of our college’s strategic plan. One of the pillars in our strategic plan highlights community engagement, and this is an area where we will build on many existing strengths in the college. In August, Professor Laura Gutiérrez joined our college as our new associate dean of Community Engagement and Public Practice, and she’s been working this year to survey our many community-engaged programs and practices and to work closely with our leadership and faculty to strategize about how to coordinate around these efforts to maximize our impact.
I wanted to share some excellent examples of the ways our work reaches well beyond the Forty Acres as we bring the arts to our neighbors as Central Texas’s largest arts organization.
- Associate Dean of UTeach Fine Arts Roxanne Schroeder-Arce directed a production of Miriam Gonzalez’s Smartest Girl in the World this fall and took the show on the road to eight schools. The bilingual production was presented to more than 2,400 students across Central Texas.
- During the recent visit from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Texas Performing Arts offered multiple events to engage the greater Austin community. This included masterclasses for UT Dance students, a community workshop in Austin’s Black Cultural District, pre- and post-show opportunities to engage with Ailey’s work and members of the company, and a free daytime youth performance that welcomed more than 1,800 participants from 40+ area schools.
- Students and faculty in the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies showcased work this fall in BuzzFest, an annual tech-art festival featuring music performers and immersive light and sound art installations in nearby Bee Caves.
- Laura Gutiérrez served as curator for OUTsider Fest, an Austin-based transmedia nonprofit that celebrates the bold originality and creative nonconformity of the LGBTQ+ communities through the presentation of film, dance, theater, performance art, music, writing and visual art.
- The UT Jazz Orchestra, led by Associate Professor Diego Rivera, has been appearing at the Loft, the back room of Mozart’s on Lake Austin, for a regular Wednesday gig, and they often play at Monk’s. Next month, they’re partnering with the Austin Swing Syndicate for a swing dance event, and Professor Rivera is planning a small tour in the fall for the ensemble to visit rural communities.
In a little more than a week on April 8, Austin will be a prime viewing location for the solar eclipse. We invite you to visit campus and take advantage of the many eclipse-related festivities have planned as part of UT’s Total Eclipse of the Horns. The Visual Arts Center is hosting a temporary exhibition of eclipse-related work, and we have three different ensembles who will be performing arrangements of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on Main Mall. Come hear UT Mariachi Paredes, Longhorn Band and our Jazz Ensemble perform this pop classic while experiencing this historic event.
Whether you are coming to campus or encountering the work of our faculty, staff and students at art and community venues across Austin and the entire state of Texas, we hope you too feel the vibrancy of our Longhorn arts community.
Sincerely,
