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Follow Shannon Jackson – Former Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts + Design – as she reflects on the core Themes of Berkeley’s creative life and responds to the opportunities and challenges of sustaining creative experimentation throughout our public life.

Whether attending a conference or a biennial, interviewing an artist or critic, or exploring the vital connection between the arts and the future of health, climate, technology, or urban life, AVCAD Jackson offers her personal perspectives on cross-disciplinary experimentation and on the role of creativity for the greater good.

Opening Up and Stepping Down

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

How poignant to be writing my last End of Year Newsletter as Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts + Design, a missive that also doubles as an “End of Term” reflection. It is moving for me to be concluding this role just as our world is opening up to life post-vaccine.

Together Creatively, near and far

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

Perhaps all of us have heard too many times that this was “a year like no other.” It was indeed a “surreal” year and a year to which many are happily bidding good riddance.  Of course, it was also a year that propelled a good deal of reflection about what it means to be healthy, what it means to be just, and w

A Year of Challenges and Transformation

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

What does it mean to share an “end of year” newsletter while in the midst of so many transformations, breakdowns, breakthroughs, and new beginnings?  

Two outlying cities facing major metropolitan development and common prejudices,
Two historical places of innovative artistic communities,

Keynote Speech: "Essential Service and the Proximate Labor of Performance"

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

What a treat to be asked by CUNY graduate students of theater, performance and art history to deliver a keynote speech at their conference on the role of labor in the fields of art and performance. Entitled “Net-Works: Mapping Labor in Theatre and Performance” and hosted by The Graduate Center at CUNY, the Mar

Action on behalf of the Arts, Design, Humanities and Our Public Life

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

The arts, design, humanities, and all centers of culture ensure the vibrancy of our region and our country.

Re-Assembling: A+D Updates and Thanks amidst COVID-19

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

Greetings to our A+D Community,

Museum Dance Now

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

I had heard through the grapevine that MoMA was going to be presenting new choreographic installations by Adam Linder.  Linder had visited the Bay Area a year earlier as an artist-in-residence at the Wattis, and I wondered if I would have a chance to see his offering in the MoMA galleries.  When Stuart Comer--

Arts and Place at the University of California

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

How do the arts contribute to our sense of place?  How does our sense of place evolve as neighbors, as city inhabitants, and as citizens in a fast-changing world?  Versions of these questions have been on the minds of many of us who care both about the arts and about the future of our public sphere.

A Triumphant 2018-2019

By
Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor

Another triumphant year.  Another year of hard work and visionary commitment to advancing Creativity for the Greater Good.