The Curb Center Creative Campus Initiative supports students, faculty, and staff, as they seek to combine their creativity and disciplinary knowledge to solve problems and advance innovation for the public good.

The Initiative, funded by the Mike Curb Family Foundation and coordinated by the Curb Center at Vanderbilt, fosters creativity, innovation, and public leadership, by:

• supporting course and curricular innovations, especially those that integrate media, design, creative problem solving, and expression with rigorous disciplinary training;
• creating a community of catalysts–faculty, staff, students, and Nashville community members who thrive on making the non-routine  happen in their classrooms, research, and work;
• transforming campus spaces through serendipitous, out-of-the-ordinary encounters and experiences that challenge everyday routines, to induce heightened thoughtful engagement and curiosity;
• provoking conversations that bring together unexpected parties and inspire novel approaches to engaging ideas, debates, and problems;
• illuminating extraordinary and everyday creative lives, including the common creative process that threads through artistic, scientific, entrepreneurial, and design work

Our endowed Curb Scholars program, our vibrant community of catalysts, signature programs such as Creative Catalyst Grants and Public Scholars program, and our effort to embed creative practice throughout the entire campus experience—from first-year orientation to graduation—distinguish Vanderbilt’s Creative Campus Initiative from all other campus-based programs.

Eighth Purgatory: Self Isolation
Oil on Canvas
Katherine Raymond (2020)
The Art of Healing Exposition