Doug Barkey: Translating Creative Exercise Into Entrepreneurial Alternative

For Doug Barkey, the newly shaped School of Creative and Professional Studies is a pure extension of MICA’s 200-year legacy. 

“MICA has always had a focus on creative careers,” he mentioned. The School of Creative and Professional Studies continues that custom by serving “both emerging professionals and those already established in their fields.”

As dean of the School of Creative and Professional Studies, Barkey oversees the event and administration of packages that allow artistic professionals to specialize, upskill or put together for management. These embrace 5 asynchronous Master of Professional Studies (MPS) levels in Business for Creatives, Data Visualization and Communication, Game Design, Product Management and User Experience (UX) Design, in addition to a web-based MA in Graphic Design and an MA/MBA in Design Leadership.

Each program, Barkey defined, is rooted within the aim of “translating art and design as a creative activity into an entrepreneurial activity.”

Barkey describes the MPS in Business for Creatives, for instance, as an “MBA for artists.” Over 18 months, college students transfer an concept from idea to examined prototype, graduating with a launch-ready marketing strategy, model platform or strategic initiative.

Alongside its diploma packages, the School of Creative and Professional Studies presents particular person programs by MICA’s Professional Studio. The fall lineup contains Advanced Culinary Photography, Generative 3D Assets for Game Design and Design Thinking for Product Innovation.

A Career in Transformation

More than 20 years as a better training chief, trainer and artist have taught Barkey the significance of adapting to new applied sciences and methods of working. 

Barkey initially skilled as a photographer, taking a job in a studio earlier than pursuing an MFA on the University of Iowa, the place he additionally earned an MA in Sculpture. The two disciplines appealed to completely different sides of his apply. Photography was conceptual and technical, whereas sculpture allowed him to work together with his arms.

As a graduate assistant at Iowa, Barkey shortly developed a style for educating. Positions on the Altos de Chavón School of Design within the Dominican Republic and the College of the Atlantic in Maine adopted. At the College of the Atlantic, Barkey established a pc lab and digital pictures studio and launched an experiential studying program for scholar graphic designers to work with native shoppers. The mannequin was so profitable that it was adopted by a nationwide coaching and improvement group to be used with Job Corps members. Barkey spent a number of years main the ensuing nonprofit program, Media WORKS Enterprise, which used design initiatives to assist members construct each laborious and comfortable expertise, with pathways into faculty, employment or the army.

Barkey then returned to larger training, holding educating and management positions at Santa Fe Community College, The Art Institutes and The University of The Bahamas, the place he served as dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts. 

That expertise in the end introduced him to MICA. Barkey was desperate to return to an artwork faculty after years in broader college settings, the place advocating for the humanities was a relentless a part of the job.

“I was really attracted to MICA because I wanted to go back to the art school model,” he mentioned. “You’re working with other creative people. You’re in the arts. For me, it’s just very inspiring to be in that kind of environment.”

Helping Creatives Find Their Way

Today, Barkey attracts on his background and experience to assist MICA college students reply to an evolving artistic financial system. He considers generative synthetic intelligence (AI) to be probably the most important adjustments dealing with artists and designers. 

“Artists are really finding their way,” he mirrored. “And so, I think we have to address it.”

Rather than isolate AI in a single course, the School of Creative and Professional Studies embeds it throughout its diploma packages. In the MPS in UX Design, as an illustration, college students work by their first programs with out utilizing AI, earlier than starting to combine it into the manufacturing course of. The purpose, Barkey mentioned, is for graduates to turn into “adept and agile” in utilizing the expertise appropriately, whereas additionally understanding its moral implications.

Barkey expects these instruments to maneuver working creatives more and more towards artwork director and producer roles, with a higher emphasis on curating and setting the imaginative and prescient. He sees a chance for artists and designers to lean additional into the sorts of labor AI can’t simply replicate.

“You need to have the eye, the experience in fine arts to understand the composition and meaning,” he mentioned. “That gives artists and designers an opportunity to draw on distinctly human strengths, like imagination, to put AI to work, using it as a tool to bring ideas to life.”

Applications at the moment are open for fall entry to MICA’s on-line MPS and MA packages and Professional Studio programs. Learn extra and apply.