Criterion One: Mission and Integrity Core Component 1c: Understanding of and support for the mission pervade the organization.

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	To expand strength in the visual and performing arts Several of our academic units and departments help us achieve our commitment to expand strength in visual and performing arts.
The UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance collaborates with area arts organizations, such as the Kansas City Symphony, Kansas City Ballet, and Lyric Opera of Kansas City. Community outreach in the arts includes numerous programs for area schools and for the general public. Our Musical Bridges program, for example, connects UMKC with urban schools and provides talented urban youth with intensive one-on-one instruction and performance experiences necessary to prepare for auditions into selective University music programs. UMKC also serves as home to the Kansas City Repertory Theatre [The Rep], a professional theater company in residence at UMKC. The 2008-09 Rep season featured eight shows performed either in the Helen F. Spencer Theatre on the UMKC Volker Campus or on the Copaken Stage, our second performance venue housed at the International Headquarters of H&R Bloch. Located in the renovated heart of the Kansas City Power and Light Entertainment District, the new stage provides the University with a physical connection to downtown. Besides bringing professional theater to the entire metropolitan area and beyond, The Rep also partners with area organizations to offer a variety of community outreach and educational programs, including the Sprint Student Matinee Series, “The Rep on the Road” and Living Drama in-school programs, job shadowing, internships, backstage tours, community classes and presentations, and our Conversation Series. In addition, The Rep provides extensive theater education resources for elementary and secondary teachers, including an electronic newsletter and resource guides for the productions. (More information about The Rep can be found in the Criterion 5 chapter.) UMKC’s Department of Art and Art History is responsible for numerous public gallery shows through the UMKC Art Gallery. Located in the Fine Arts Building, the UMKC Art Gallery offers the campus and community a continually changing series of art exhibits. As the host of major traveling shows and exhibits of area artists, the museum showings have ranged from the works of Yoko Ono to UMKC’s original traveling show featuring African-American quilt making. Most recently, the UMKC Art Gallery featured an exhibit titled “Cultural Evolution and Diffusion,” an exhibition of prints by 10 of America’s finest Japanese-American artists, as well as an exhibit of current UMKC student work. The College of Arts and Sciences’ Film and Media Arts program is the founding partner of the nationally recognized Filmmakers Jubilee and the Kansas City FilmFest. In 1996, the Filmmakers Jubilee was founded as a collaborative venture of our Film and Media Arts program, the neighboring Kansas City Art Institute, and the Film Society of Kansas City. At the first event, 27 Kansas City filmmakers submitted entries. Their entry fees, totaling $270, became the new organization’s first operations budget. During the past 12 years, Filmmakers Jubilee has grown dramatically. Since receiving its 501(c)(3) designation in June 1998, Filmmakers Jubilee has received thousands of entries from all over the world, with 570 submitted for the 2008 festival. More than $210,000 in cash and prizes has been awarded at the festival and more than 250 visiting film professionals have come to Kansas City to share their work and experiences with UMKC, area students and community members. In 2007, as part of our visual and performing arts mission, UM System’s Board of Curators and the Missouri Coordinating Board of Higher Education approved a new emphasis area in film and media arts. The program is in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Communication Studies. As part of their course work, our film students are required to produce documentaries to be used as education resources for the metropolitan area’s civic and not-for-profit organizations. Recent examples include Kansas City’s rain-garden project, H&R Bloch’s public art project, and a documentary produced by the UMKC Women’s Center, which is shown to all entering UMKC students to educate them about issues of alcohol abuse and sexual assault. In 2007, the program’s undergraduate students wrote, produced, filmed and edited a 20-minute documentary public art project for the new international headquarters of H&R Bloch. Titled “Art on the Bloch,” the film was been shown on Kansas City’s PBS station and won a top prize from the International Student Film Festival in Los Angeles. Our students’ individual works have won juried positions in area, national and international film festivals. Serving the community, the program produces free weekly film screenings of classic American and foreign films at the Tivoli Theater, a professional movie theater several blocks from the Volker campus in the historic Westport district. These screenings have proven very popular with both students and the public, averaging 200-300 viewers a screening. Our literary arts are also a vital element to our arts mission. In 2008, UMKC’s literary magazine, New Letters, received the National Magazine Award for best essay, beating out such notable publications as The New Yorker. We also present an internationally syndicated radio program, New Letters on the Air, that enhances the cultural reputation of the entire Kansas City metropolitan area. This syndicated radio program is the oldest ongoing literary program in American broadcasting. The program’s valuable archive contains interviews with major literary figures of the past half-century. In 2008, New Letters on the Air received a major national grant to preserve the archive for future generations.
Looking toward the future, we will further enhance our University’s role in the visual and performing arts with the UMKC Graduate School’s new M.F.A. degree program in Creative Writing and Media Arts, beginning in Fall 2009.