Lyons Arts Lab
Celebrate and Elevate
The Lyons Arts Lab offers unparalleled support for Colby students to advance their creative work.
Mission
Colby’s Lyons Arts Lab inspires, celebrates, and elevates student work in the arts. It supports students at multiple stages of a creative process—from an idea’s inception to a project’s completion. The multi-faceted program tailors support to each project, helping students challenge, expand, and refine their ideas towards the development of original work. Support from the lab allows students to liberate creative thought and action, with learning, making, and connection-building at its center.
The Lab gathers resources from across the college and its expansive community and leverages networks of support, including the expertise of faculty, alumni, industry professionals, and the college’s curricular arts programs. In the spirit of the liberal arts, Lyons Arts Lab Programs open pathways for experimentation across disciplines, serve as gateways into the college’s academic arts programs, and offer support for the most rigorous creative practices. The Lyons Arts Lab underscores the transformative potential of creative curiosity in building a life of meaning, purpose, and beauty.
Director of the Lyons Arts Lab
Inaugural Director Annie Kloppenberg is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Performance, Theater, and Dance. As a choreographer, interdisciplinarity, multi-arts projects, and collaboration have long animated her teaching and her own work, which has been presented internationally.
As director of the lab, she works to identify unique needs of each creative project, to mine the lab’s and the college’s resources to help bring projects to life, and to help each student progress as an artist. Kloppenberg knows that the creative process is not a straight path forward and works with students to navigate meandering paths as they explore, refine, and adapt their creative strategies.