Geneva's Meet the Artist Series Going Strong in Virtual Environment

Like all events hosted by Webster's Geneva campus, the Meet the Artist Lecture Series moved online in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic. But in the nine events held online since that time, the series has continued to thrive and engage students.

Organized by the Global Citizenship Program in collaboration with the Webster Center of Creativity and Innovation (WCCI) and the Media Communications department, the Meet the Artist series enables professional artists, art professionals, academics, Webster alumni and current staff to speak about their work to the Webster community.

Its main goals as a learning platform are to integrate the arts across disciplines and majors, to activate students’ potential for creative and innovative thinking through activities that are both cognitive and experiential – e.g. curating, engaging with artists' creative process and art making, and podcasting – and to develop their capacity for lifelong learning.

Going online has proved fruitful for Meet the Artist, as demonstrated by nine talks given since March. [Related: See this story on events held in the spring and summer.]

The three events that took place during fall 2020 have supported the learning outcomes of Global Cornerstone Seminar and Keystone seminar, two courses which mark the beginning and the end of a student’s progress in the Global Citizenship Program at Webster University.

Q&A with Rwandan-Swiss Filmmaker

On Oct. 1, the students from GLBC 1200: Global Cornerstone Seminar hosted a Q&A (pictured above) with Rwandan-Swiss documentary filmmaker Shyaka Kagame about his 2017 film, Bounty. A link to this Q&A is available here.

Roles of Novelist and Historian

On Nov. 12, the same students had the opportunity to hear novelist and essayist Joshua Craze talk about the research he is currently undertaking in the UNHCR archive, and his thoughts about the respective roles of the historian and the novelist. His talk, which can be found here, was sponsored by the Swiss cultural association Embassy of Foreign Artists.

Food and Nature with culturalex

On Nov. 16, artist and activist Alexandra Rodriguez (aka culturalex) explained how she uses food and nature in her work to the students enrolled in KEYS 4015: Food for Thought, a course which focuses on how and where food is produced, as well as issues of food scarcity, distribution, and pricing. It addresses local, national and international influences as well as the ethical issues surrounding these topics. A link to this conversation is available here.

Upcoming Events in Spring 2021

We look forward to a more visual segment of the Meet the Artist Lecture Series during the Spring 1 2021 term, in anticipation of talks by illustrator Carolina Deluca, art advisor Taymour Grahne, jewelry expert Helen Molesworth, art entrepreneur Didier Schwatz, and ceramicist and Webster alum Mette Myllenen, amongst others! Two of these talks will be given in collaboration with Career Services of Webster University. The organizers of Meet the Artist look forward to this new collaboration!

The dates of these events will be available shortly through Webster's events listings via: webster.ch/events/meet_the_artist.