The Integrated Arts Program (IAP) is a dynamic program in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences offering students a unique opportunity to explore the creative process across disciplinary lines. Students work with a distinguished faculty from WCAS, the School of Music, and the School of Speech, working from the perspective of the artist in the fields of theatre, visual arts, music, dance, and media arts. The program is designed for students interested in a multidisciplinary understanding of the arts, and is open to all students regardless of their level of experience in the arts.

At Northwestern, students are introduced to many different practical and theoretical ways of approaching the arts. In the Integrated Arts Program one particular conceptual model is used to investigate the meaning of art, focusing consistently on four points of reference: artist, artists' media, artwork, and audience.

This adventuresome program seeks to immerse students in the process of the arts and attempts to bridge the gap between performance and analysis. To accomplish this end, most of its courses are developed around a combined lecture/studio format. This means that a typical week of class meetings includes two lectures and one three-hour studio. Another distinctive feature of the program is that it crosses the boundaries of the traditional arts and often involves collaboration between several art forms. Because the program strives to break down the barriers that separate the practitioner from the scholar-the doer from the knower of the art-many of the courses are team-taught, and the foundational course involves six instructors.

Philosophically, the Integrated Arts Program believes that making art provides a basis for its knowing. The program fuses knowing and doing, encourages a collaborative spirit among the students and faculty, and involves small classes and a remarkably individualized course of study. The program also encourages experimentation and risk-taking and creates an environment conducive to both. To stimulate involvement in on-campus events and to heighten awareness of the audience as an integral part of the art process, students are required to attend events at theatres, galleries, concert halls, and dance studios.