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California Institute of the Arts

CalArts Pedagogical History

Faculty Affairs

A CalArts professor in a baseball cap speaks to a large group of students assembled on a city sidewalk

Harry Gamboa leads a walking tour in Los Angeles in the LA Urbanscape class for the School of Art.

Steeped in a tradition of experimentation, CalArts’ pedagogical model challenges expectations of the meaning of education and its structures, questions hierarchies in the classroom, embraces experimentation and interdisciplinarity, and pushes against formal limits and definitions.

CalArts’ distinctive approach to teaching was a major influence on much of the process-based, experience-led models and practices of arts education that currently exist. 

Today, we draw on the parallel tradition of critical pedagogy to expand this legacy by engaging the multiplicity of identities, experiences, and histories our students and faculty bring to campus, contextualized within the political and social realities of the United States and the larger world, and continually evaluating and transforming our pedagogy in light of them.

Our guiding principles include:

  • Project-based teaching
  • A questioning of hierarchies between students, faculty, and administration
  • A belief in the development of highly individualized artistic process and voices, within the context of a “community of the arts,” all housed in one building and in dialogue with one another
  • A questioning of the definitions and limitations of disciplines and metiers
  • A valuing of process over product, and an emphasis on the value on developing a sustainable artistic process
  • A de-emphasis on grades and an emphasis on dialogue and critique
  • A highly multi- and interdisciplinary approach

CalArts pedagogical history

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