Disrupters in the Desert

Creative minds from around the country mobilized through a new national accelerator for cultural innovation and inclusion at ASU

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Shortly after he arrived in Arizona, as the new dean of ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Steven J. Tepper began assembling his dream team to help expand and amplify the work of the Herberger Institute’s faculty and students. He drew its members from a short list of names known for changing the landscape in their field. The first members of the team included dance legend Liz Lerman, theatre luminary Michael Rohd and acclaimed genre-bending composer/violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, followed by policy fellows Ruby Lerner, Maribel Alvarez and Carlton Turner.

As new faculty and staff have been hired, the dream team has grown and so has the mission. In the summer of 2018, Jen Cole, an innovative leader who sees arts and culture as a transformative public good rather than simply a commodity, arrived at ASU to help launch a national program that will integrate design and the arts across sectors to help find solutions to the world’s biggest problems.

“I’ve always known that if I ever had the opportunity to work at a national and global level to change arts and culture, Jen would be among the first people I’d recruit,” said Tepper. “She has some radical ideas that reimagine how arts and culture can intersect with all areas of society. Her leadership and ideas are a perfect fit for the transformation we hope to lead at Herberger Institute and ASU.”

“The opportunity to continue the work I started in Nashville and advance it in a larger context at Herberger Institute is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What we’re going to do has never been done before.”

Jen Cole, Director, National Accelerator for Cultural Innovation and Inclusion

COLE, FORMERLY THE executive director of Metro Arts Nashville Office of Arts and Culture, implemented her vision there by using the arts to spur economic development, enhance wage growth, improve housing access and advance racial equity in Tennessee.At ASU, Cole will design, build and grow the National Accelerator for Cultural Innovation and Inclusion, a new endeavor that will build on nationally funded work that Herberger Institute has already undertaken to advance innovative ideas in design, arts and culture. The accelerator will test and scale those ideas for national and global impact.

“The opportunity to continue the work I started in Nashville and advance it in a larger context at the Herberger Institute is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Cole said. “What we’re going to do has never been done before.”

In her years heading Metro Arts, Cole shifted the focus from only grants to creating societal change through the arts. That included, for example, producing arts-related interventions for court-involved youth and training artists to work with community partners on such issues as affordable housing, justice and immigration.

“This is what we do at ASU,” said Sethuraman Panchanathan, executive vice president of research and innovation at ASU. “We have world-class faculty and researchers, we have tremendous students who will be the next generation of leaders in the arts, we have a global network of industry, civic and community partners. We can bring all of these players together to advance the best ideas in arts and culture and really serve as a catalyst for the enterprising work of so many talented artists around the country and the world.”

Cole has more than two decades of experience in organizational leadership and change management and has worked extensively in the public and nonprofit sectors in a variety of executive positions. Starting in 2010, she led the city of Nashville’s efforts in arts, culture and creative economy in her role as the director of Metro Arts Nashville Office of Arts and Culture. She serves on the board of Americans for the Arts, where she chairs the U.S. Urban Arts Federation, and is a frequent national speaker about the role of arts in community transformation.

“Artists have long worked as allies in building equitable, healthy and sustainable communities,” said Jamie Bennett, executive director of ArtPlace America. “With this national accelerator, ASU can now offer the space, time, resources and support for artists to test and scale their ideas before returning with them to their communities. This may well be a tipping point for the field.”

The accelerator is being launched in partnership with ASU Gammage.

“Jen Cole has emerged as one of the most important arts leaders in America, known for advancing a new way of thinking about cultural policy,” said Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, ASU’s vice president for cultural affairs and executive director of ASU Gammage. “She is going to be an extraordinary asset for the university and for the region.”

Cole said she was eager to make the move and become part of the community.

“My family is very excited about becoming both part of the ASU family and the Arizona family,” Cole said, “because this work is always rooted in the community in which we live and an understanding of the assets and values in the community. So I’m really excited not just about Herberger Institute and working with Steven but about building roots in a new and interesting community that has a lot to teach me and to teach my family.”

“This is what we do at ASU, we have world-class faculty and researchers, we have tremendous students who will be the next generation of leaders in the arts, we have a global network of industry, civic and community partners. We can bring all of these players together to advance the best ideas in arts and culture and really serve as a catalyst for the enterprising work of so many talented artists around the country and the world.”

Sethuraman Panchanathan, Executive vice president of research and innovation, ASU