On Saturday, January 18, HCU鈥檚 Narrative Arts Department held its inaugural Narrative Arts Conference. While there had been precedent in the popular HCU Creative Writing Conference, this marked a new step for the realigned Narrative Arts program.
HCU professors Dr. Matthew Boyleston and Joshua Sikora sought to take the annual writers鈥� conference and expand it into a full narrative arts conference, featuring presentations in all three of the department鈥檚 main content areas: digital media, creative writing and cinematic arts. The theme was 鈥淐reativity and Community鈥濃�� fitting for a department that has realigned to emphasize shared community across creative disciplines.
The conference began with a keynote delivered by Andrew Peterson, recording artist and author of the popular 鈥淲ingfeather鈥� series of fantasy novels, to over 270 attendees in the new Morris Family Center for Law & Liberty.
Peterson鈥檚 keynote, bookended by two moving song performances, was a poignant reflection on the theme of time, and what artmaking says about the past, present and future. Peterson walked attendees through the various ways his own art has interacted with these three aspects of time.
Following this keynote, the conference comprised three breakout sessions. Each session offered attendees the chance to explore creative writing, cinematic arts or digital media led by various experts, including featured speakers best-selling author Bret Lott, three-time Emmy-award winning actor, Tony Hale and Soma Games founder, Chris Skaggs.
Bret Lott explored detail and truth in writing and reminded attendees that, to speak truthfully, writers have to give more detail than they might think necessary. He likened writing to a cross-stitch: the image presented is clean and clear, but the back of the cloth shows a jumble of yarn. Lott charged aspiring writers to be courageous in their writing and to avoid complacency and cliche.
In the first afternoon block, Hale was joined by HCU professor Bearden Coleman for a wide-ranging conversation about faith, acting and filmmaking. Hale noted that in an unpredictable industry, his career is full of uncertainty, and that maintaining success depends on the community around you. He talked about his craft, how his faith informs his work and about finding satisfaction in something beyond career success.
Later in the afternoon, video game designer Chris Skaggs gave an inspiring call-to-arms for the Church to engage with the art of video games. Skaggs highlighted that we are at an inflection point for the industry, and the Church should not ignore the industry which itself is already bigger and more lucrative than Hollywood. According to Skaggs, video games are shaping culture in much the same way that Hollywood has. The Church has a prime opportunity to influence both the ethics of the industry and the stories it chooses to tell, and he commended HCU for being one of the Christian universities dedicated to training students to enter this industry.
The final session was a roundtable discussion with Peterson, Hale and Skaggs, moderated by Bret Lott. This was a wide-ranging conversation in which the speakers reflected on their earliest memories of creating art, their mindsets during the creative process and how their faith and communities help sustain them when they are in creative dry spells. The inaugural HCU Narrative Arts Conference and its theme, 鈥淐reativity and Community,鈥� can be encapsulated well by something Tony Hale said in his breakout session: 鈥淚nvest in your community before you invest in your career.鈥�