About ACAD
President

Welcome to the ACAD website on behalf of the Board of Governors, Faculty, Staff, and Students of the Alberta College of Art + Design.

ACAD is one of only four degree-granting colleges of art and design in Canada; in our 80th year, ACAD has much to celebrate. Our alumni have established themselves as influential thinkers and practitioners in the fine arts, crafts, and design; we find their work and their impact throughout Canada and the world.

Even while we embrace our accomplishments and our history, ACAD is profoundly engaged in conversation within the college and with our external communities regarding our effect and presence as an institution. Within the last two years the Board of Governors and the college population have adopted a new vision statement, a new mission, and we have been granted a new mandate from our government that will allow us to initiate a research mandate as well as the offering of graduate degrees. Our future is as vibrant and promising as our past; consistent with our new mission statement, we know that we will indeed engage the world and create possibilities.

If you are a prospective student, you should know that our vision endorses an educational environment in which we operate as a true laboratory for creativity and exploration. At ACAD, you will find a faculty and staff that are passionate about working with you as a collaborator, engaging in vital and spirited dialogue, and provoking your work and research without constraint.

If you an alumni of ACAD you will find a renewed effort to bring you back into our community of artists and scholars as we begin to craft new programmes that connect our graduates with our students, provide mechanisms for alumni networks to form, and create new services that you will find vital. Our goal is to make certain that your time at ACAD was only the beginning of your relationship with the college.

If you are a community member or ACAD supporter, you will find that the college is redefining its relationship to our external partners and the larger issues of cultural development. We want to delineate what a cultural institution such as ACAD can mean for cultural development, community building, and areas of practice that are not historically considered to be the purview of art and design. Our new Institute for the Creative Process, a singular entity within Canada, is designed to explore how creative processes and design thinking can be applied to issues such as strategy and policy formulation, community issues, business effectiveness, health care, and a wide range of other arenas. We welcome partners in this unique and important work.

This is a noteworthy time to become a part of ACAD; irrespective of your role, we welcome partnerships, engagement, and most of all the creation of conversation and discourse surrounding what our work is, and what it could be.

Lance Carlson
President + CEO
president@acad.ca

Presentations + Publications

President Header | Photographer John Gaucher