The Partnership for Arts and Culture (PAC) is one of five partnerships of the Community Engagement Initiative (CEI). CEI is charged with prime responsibility for carrying out the University of Delaware Civic Action Plan, the University’s strategic vision for community engagement. Read about the work of PAC in our annual reports.
PAC operates in a coordinated and complimentary manner with other departments, institutes and centers across the university, and within the greater community. PAC supports the development of new partnerships, strengthens existing partnerships and serves as a repository/resource for artistic and cultural collaborations with a specific focus on global understanding and social change.
Arts and culture promote understanding and action on issues facing our communities and the world. A few areas impacted by arts and cultural projects include healing, attitudinal change, increased civic participation, cognitive, behavioral and effective engagement, enhanced empathy, and policy change. See Americans for the Arts.
PAC aims to:
- Promote the engagement of the arts and cultural disciplines in designing, implementing and assessing multidisciplinary solutions to social issues e.g. educational, environmental, historical and/or personal, leading to global understanding and social change;
- Provide assessment and research support designed to measure the impact of current and developing initiatives;
- Serve as a centralized repository and resource for information regarding current University of Delaware arts and culture community engagement projects and initiatives;
- Serve as a collaboratory (space) for the development of new inter-arts, multidisciplinary initiatives;
- Provide the foundation for large-scale, externally-funded research programs and projects focused on arts and culture for global understanding and social change;
- Develop the institutional capacity to become a national center for excellence in arts and cultural initiatives designed to promote global understanding and social change; and
- Work in concert with the other initiatives of the Community Engagement Initiative to establish the University of Delaware as a place where students, faculty/staff, and community partners are deeply engaged in solving the difficult problems of the world.