NYU Abu Dhabi

In 2013, THE OFFICE was engaged by New York University Abu Dhabi to create a Strategic Business, Artistic and Operational Plan for its yet-to-be-built NYUAD Arts Center. During the process, we wrote the mission, oversaw the executive search and helped build the initial staff. Our process produced an expansive but focused compendium of information that empowered NYUAD to create an Arts Center that met best practices at comparative institutions; integrated priorities from an array of stakeholders including students, faculty, administrators, artists, and local and regional cultural players; and supplied multiple financial and operational models encompassing staffing, programming, and production.

Excerpt from our report:”This model … will provide NYUAD with compelling programming that connects to the curriculum, using the arts to illuminate and enliven the scholarly pursuits of students and faculty. Key to this approach would be a series of events in theater, dance, film and music that can be used as teaching tools across campus. Works chosen will reflect and connect to the scholarship happening across campus. All artists in this series would visit classes, give artists talk and participate in appropriate Integrated Programming across disciplines. There will also be Artists Creative Labs supporting works in progress and providing students opportunities to see work being developed, learn about process, and work alongside master artists. These will include master classes, lectures and public open rehearsals/preview showings. The NYUAD Arts Center aspires to be an internationally renowned performing arts center that presents student, faculty, and community productions alongside distinguished professional artists from around the world. As a place that both presents and develops work, the Arts Center will act as a vibrant laboratory for performance that fosters a dynamic relationship between the arts, scholarship, and community. It will serve NYUAD with compelling programming that connects to the curriculum, using the arts to illuminate and enliven the scholarly pursuits of students and faculty. It will host a range of public programs that draw residents of Abu Dhabi to the campus, animating and enriching the cultural life of both the city and the university through interaction. The NYUAD Arts Center will strive to be a beacon on the international arts landscape, firmly rooted in the region but with a global reach, all the while embedded in the university and welcoming Emiratis and the local community. Excellence, collaboration, creativity, accessibility, innovation, respect and understanding are the core values that govern NYUAD Arts Center.”