Music, Theater, or Visual Art Concentration, Creative Arts Enterprise, BA

Major
On Campus, Day
Humanities
Concert Band with Amy McGlothlin conducting in Weston Auditorium

In Short

As a student in the Creative Arts Enterprise program, you will hone your artistic skills as a musician, visual artist, or theatrical artist, while also expanding your knowledge of administration, marketing, publicity, and entrepreneurship. CAE graduates are well positioned to be active and thriving artists and arts administrators in the contemporary creative economy.

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Program Overview

The Creative Arts Enterprise major program equips you to be an active and engaged arts professional in the modern world. You will select a concentration in Music, Theater, or Visual Art, and get extensive training in that artistic discipline. In addition, you will take a highly customizable set of coursework in entrepreneurship, marketing, and professional writing. The major allows you to develop a personalized and flexible set of skills, with which you will emerge as a creative artist ready to meet the needs of audiences and arts organizations in a shifting global economy.

You will be prepared for a career as a fine or performing artist with a solid grasp of how to manage the entrepreneurial aspects of being a professional in the arts, and also for a career as an arts administrator, promoter, or other position with a diverse set of organizational demands, but where a strong grounding as a fine or performing artist is highly beneficial.

The CAE program draws on the expertise of invested faculty in multiple departments and disciplines across campus, and allows students to form multiple mentoring relationships across subject areas. The degree is awarded as a Bachelor of Arts (BA), and you will need to complete courses demonstrating intermediate proficiency in a world language - further positioning you as a versatile arts professional.

Are you a current Fitchburg State student looking to change your major to Creative Arts Enterprise? Please fill out this internal transfer form, and consult the Registrar's Office.

Hear more about the program from Dr. Jonathan Harvey.

Register for classes

For more information email: CAE@fitchburgstate.edu

Associate Professor Dr. Jonathan Harvey discusses the various music and art spaces on campus, along with the university's collaboration with the Fitchburg Art Museum.

Experiential Opportunities

Internships

Internships are a great opportunity to get valuable, real-world experiences before entering a competitive job market.
Read more about: Internships

ARTeries

ARTeries is Fitchburg State University Art Department’s annual juried exhibition that showcases the strongest original student work in drawing, painting, sculpture, and mixed-media art. 
Read more about: ARTeries

Concert Band

The Concert Band at Fitchburg State is open to all people with experience playing a band instrument.
Read more about: Concert Band

Fitchburg State Choirs

No matter your level of musical experience, there is a place for you in the Fitchburg State Choirs.
Read more about: Fitchburg State Choirs

Community Orchestra

The Fitchburg State Community Orchestra is comprised of students, faculty members, and other musicians who live in the Greater Fitchburg community.
Read more about: Community Orchestra

Jazz and Modern Band

The Fitchburg State Jazz and Modern Band "The Fitchbyrds" is open to all students and faculty of Fitchburg State who play ANY instrument. 
Read more about: Jazz and Modern Band

Study Abroad

Faculty-led study abroad course opportunities increase student life-transforming experiences, as do student/faculty cooperative research projects.
Read more about: Study Abroad

Curriculum and Other Information

Students who complete this program will be able to:

  • Demonstrate proficiency in the core tools and skills of their artistic practice
  • Evaluate and critique works from their artistic discipline through the lens of appropriate theoretical and historical contexts
  • Develop writing skills needed to address diverse audiences in a variety of professional products and genres
  • Integrate academic work with public engagement to produce audience-aware marketing products, artworks, and performances
  • Apply entrepreneurial skills (market opportunity recognition and creation, risk assessment, financing, strategic planning, etc.) to artistic practices and institutions
  • Develop an understanding of the ways that the arts impact community social and economic development
  • Administrator and manager of arts organizations (orchestras, theaters, galleries, museums, choirs, bands, studios)
  • Professional visual artist, musician, actor, director, etc.
  • Arts nonprofit administrator
  • Artist promoter / marketer
  • Curator / museum worker
  • Craft and fine artist
  • Art director
  • Theatrical producer / director
  • Arts entrepreneur, creating the new arts-focused businesses of the future

The Creative Arts Enterprise program creates and enhances institutional ties to our local community, with mutual benefit to students and arts organizations in the region. The city of Fitchburg's focus on the arts as a means of renewal involves an ever-growing number of arts projects and organizations dedicated to this work, which creates opportunities for our students and program graduates alike. To highlight just a few examples of projects that represent this focus:

  • NewVue Communities, a non-profit organization working on a range of community issues, runs a Fitchburg Arts Stewards Training program, and as a result the city now has an active and growing Arts Stewards community group
  • The BF Brown / Fitchburg Arts Community project involves a large number of live-work artist studio spaces across the street from the Fitchburg Art Museum
  • The Community Mural Institute, resulting in three large-scale murals in Fitchburg’s downtown neighborhood, each developed in collaboration with a specific community group to honor their work
  • The City of Fitchburg’s recent NEA-funded Main Street Arts Project, commissioning public art pieces for four key intersections downtown
  • The university’s acquisition and development of a major theatrical space on Main Street in downtown Fitchburg