$1 Million Gifts to Transform Craft & Music Programs Windgate Foundation Grant Elevates Warren Wilson as National Leader in Craft By Mary Bates, photo by Matt Haugh
W
arren Wilson College has received a grant of $948,750 from the Windgate Foundation to strengthen the Craft program. The grant will help position Warren Wilson College as a national leader in liberal arts craft education. “After many years of building both our academic and experiential Craft programming at Warren Wilson, we are ready to take our undergraduate Craft program to the next level,” said Dr. Lynn Morton, President of Warren Wilson College. “This vision and plan will elevate Warren Wilson as one of the strongest liberal arts colleges in the country with this distinctive focus on Craft.” With the grant, the College will be able to substantially increase the number of undergraduate students taking craft-related courses each semester and provide more scholarships for students in the Art and Craft programs over the course of three years. The grant also enables Warren Wilson to support Craft instruction, complete facility enhancements, procure new equipment, and host visiting artists. The College’s plan going forward is to align the complementary yet separate areas of undergraduate Craft—scholarship, making, and programming—under the direction of a more formalized Craft program within the Arts at Warren Wilson. It will also help connect the existing undergraduate and graduate programs with craft communities in the rest of the world. Warren Wilson has designed and developed a distinctive strength and focus in Craft as an academic field over the past several years. The College currently offers an undergraduate minor in Craft, and the low-residency Master of Arts in Critical Craft Studies, founded in 2018, is the first program of its kind in the world. The College also 15
/
WARREN WILSON COLLEGE
provides experiential programming through its craft work crews, including Fiber Arts, Blacksmithing, and Fine Woodworking. The grant will allow the College to enhance the opportunities that already exist for students through the new Craft Studios program, so students can take academic courses for credit and have integrated work-learning opportunities. In addition, the College is working with internal and external partners to create “The Craftscape at Warren Wilson College,” an experiential opportunity for students to further connect Craft to the land and provide academic and research opportunities unlike any found across the nation. Warren Wilson Provost and Dean of the Faculty Jay Roberts, Ph.D., has a background in aligning program enhancements with institutional strategy. Upon beginning his position at Warren Wilson last summer, he saw the Art Department and Craft programming as a compelling opportunity to pursue further integration. “The Arts at Warren Wilson have a high demand for studio courses, and there are always waiting lists,” Roberts said. “Our students are eager to participate, make, and learn, and with this new funding and structure we will be able to significantly expand our capacity to teach Craft and meet this need.” Warren Wilson’s partnership with the Windgate Foundation began in 2013. The last grant that Warren Wilson College received from the Windgate Foundation was $2.1 million to launch both the undergraduate minor in Craft and the Master of Arts in Critical Craft Studies, and to continue to foster a partnership between Warren Wilson and the Center for Craft in Asheville.
