A Message from the Dean - Professor Sharman Pretty
Welcome to the Faculty of the VCA and Music. The arts hold the potential to offer hope, inspiration and new ways of understanding in complex and uncertain times. Through the arts, communities are transformed, national identity defined and celebrated, and economic positioning and repositioning leveraged. With the formation of the Faculty of the VCA and Music (VCAM), The University of Melbourne has signaled its ongoing commitment to fostering and enhancing creativity and imagining across the University through placing the arts at its heart.
VCAM is committed to being a centre of creative and scholarly excellence that is recognised internationally for the courage of its innovation and the quality of its outputs in contemporary creative arts research, education, scholarship and practice. This commitment forms the foundations of its work. The advancement of excellence in each of the disciplines represented provides the platform for the development of ground breaking inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary creative opportunities, collaborations and outcomes.
VCAM brings together a wide range of creative disciplines within the Schools of Art, Music, and Performing Arts, and the Film and Television programs, and offers undergraduate and post-graduate programs in these discipline areas. The emphasis is consistently on creative exploration and discovery within an academically broad and well-articulated critical and theoretical framework. In all disciplines, significant emphasis is placed on “doing” and “making” within a studio context.
VCAM has strong links to its communities of interest within Melbourne’s vibrant creative sector and the wider Asian and Pacific Rim regions. Students have the opportunity to engage with leading professional practitioners and scholars through their regular engagement in teaching and special events. VCAM is also committed to ensuring that all students have the opportunity to develop their international horizons. Performance and study tours feature regularly on the annual programs of Schools. Students are also encouraged to participate in the exciting opportunities available through the University’s and VCAM’s student exchange programs. Through these programs, students can spend up to a year of their undergraduate studies in a partner institution overseas, an experience guaranteed to change each participant’s horizons and perspectives for a lifetime.
My colleagues in VCAM and I recognise that the students of today and the creative practitioners, professionals and scholars of tomorrow need broad knowledge and experience. They need not only to generate relevant and challenging ideas, but also have a strong knowledge base and well-honed research and practice skills, together with qualities of initiative, entrepreneurship, curiosity, and the ability to collaborate and work effectively as a member of a team. We seek to support and guide our students towards achievement and success in all of these areas.