Part of what makes Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA) Director A-lan Holt such an effective champion of the organization is that she benefited from its programming and support both as a student and visiting artist before taking the helm.
“IDA was my first artistic home as a student,” said Holt, BA ’11, who has helped lead IDA for the past 10 years as associate director and now director. “It was where I developed my earliest plays, where I met some of my earliest collaborators and friends, and it’s always been a place that’s been really special to me on campus.”
IDA supports student and local artists through courses, fellowships, and other programming, as well as presenting public programming open to all. Adam Banks, who co-leads with Holt as faculty director, says his motivation to push the institute forward came from a desire to build on the work being done, and engage with artists who would foster his own personal growth.
“I see myself as arts-adjacent, so I believe that I benefit from being in community with such awesome artists,” said Banks, who is also a professor of education and, by courtesy, of African and African American studies. “I get to think differently about my scholarly practice, my community, and how I teach my students at Stanford and beyond.”
As IDA prepares to celebrate 25 years in service to cultivating artists and art leaders at Stanford, Holt and Banks discuss how they hope to continue the institute’s legacy of excellence and inclusion for decades to come.
IDA’s mission is to steward the power of the arts toward social action. What does that mean for you today?
Holt: For me, it means that the arts are more than just a moving performance or a beautiful painting. The arts have the opportunity to take the pulse of a community and move it forward.
Banks: Cultural change has always preceded social or political change. So it’s the work that artists do that lets communities know what’s possible on the way there. By nurturing and investing in artists to be their freest, most uninhibited selves in the pursuit of art or leadership within the arts, we get the possibility of impact that creates worlds that are big enough for all of us.
In reflecting on IDA’s 25-year history on campus, how have you seen it evolve?
Banks: We’ve grown a great deal in terms of staff, budget, and the different kinds of programming we’ve been able to offer our students. We have an Artists in Resonance program where we’re investing directly in students through supplies, time to create, and helping them build community through a cohort model.
And we’ve been expanding the courses we offer directly to students as well, with courses like Intro to IDA in the fall, Chinaka Hodge’s Hella Cinematic course, which is going on right now, and a spring course that is designed to explore different parts of the art-making process and help the students to be in community with practicing artists.
The arts have the opportunity to take the pulse of a community and move it forward.A-lan HoltDirector, Institute for Diversity in the Arts
Holt: The amount of programs the students can now get involved in to get funded for their art, learn more about art, activate their art in community, or get involved and learn more about artists in the world has grown so much since I participated in IDA as a student.
When I was here, it was a very intimate community, and now it’s deeply robust and lives both in the academic departments and the extracurricular sphere. This recent fall quarter alone, we engaged around 1,300 students and community members.
When you think of IDA’s impact, what are you most proud of?
Banks: I’m most proud of the fact that students who come through IDA stay connected with us and that they’re proud of the experience they’ve had with us. That they had space to be who they want to be as artists or people in the world who are deeply connected to the arts.
The fact that students get to find their way as artists, with that freedom encouraged, is something I’m very proud of.
Holt: I’m most proud of IDA for changing the culture of the arts at Stanford and developing some of the most innovative artists of our time. It’s rare that there’s an artist that’s come out of Stanford that hasn’t been influenced by IDA, and I’m talking about Amy Aniobi, Issa Rae, and Tracy Oliver, to name a few. It’s crazy that our little Harmony House has been an incubator for so many generations of artists, and I’m really proud to be a part of that and making sure that it lives on into the future.
How do you hope to see IDA grow in the coming years?
Holt: Our first biggest goal is sustainability. We have to make sure that we’re able to exist beyond the waves of any given moment or culture. So we want to be here in perpetuity, and a lot of that is about financial sustainability for the organization.
Additionally, one of the roots of IDA is that it has always been about being a home base for the community, for artists at Stanford and across the Bay Area. As our arts landscape is shifting in the Bay Area, I want IDA to be ready to hold the communities that have been impacted by that shift.
Banks: Where I see us growing is in connecting more deeply with East Palo Alto on multiple levels, and doing more community-based work where we’re encouraging people to work, think, and inquire with us. Really inviting those two-way relationships is going to be an even bigger part of our next chapter moving forward.
We also want to be a hub for artists and arts organizations in the Bay Area that are thinking about similar issues. We want Harmony House to be a place where they’re welcome, too. These could be artists, nonprofits, or art leaders, and we want to deepen those relationships so that those people in the Bay see us as part of their home as well.
Writer
Olivia Peterkin
