Center for Media and Integrated Arts Taking Shape

As Oberlin College’s groundbreaking BA+BFA program enters its second year, its creative hub on campus is coming into view.

Construction is underway on the Oberlin Center for Media and Integrated Arts: a two-level, 12,700-square-foot multipurpose production space that will be completed in spring 2027 and debut the following fall. 

Located in the former campus bookstore on College Street, at the intersection of Oberlin’s campus and community, the center will serve as the campus home for the BA+BFA, a dual-degree program through which students earn a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts in five years. 

The center also allows for the much-needed expansion of Oberlin’s Cinema and Media Department, which will manage the space. In addition to supporting the growing number of cinema and media production courses, it provides opportunities to enhance the integration of video and digital media into courses across other practicing arts areas, such as dance, theater, and creative writing.

The center’s ground floor, which overlooks Tappan Square and the Conservatory of Music, will include:

• 2,000-square-foot shooting studio and projection room
• Full surround-sound post-production suite
• Collaboration/breakout workspaces
• Gallery space with an art wall for display of student work
• Cinema and Media equipment storage and checkout space, where students can reserve, test, and borrow cameras, lights, audio recorders, and grip gear.

The lower level will be home to:

• 2,300-square-foot integrated arts workshop and performance space
• Editing/media classroom with 20 student workstations and 1 instructor workstation
• Makerspace
• Animation studio for 2D and 3D stop-motion projects.

Julia Christensen, Oberlin’s Eva and John Young-Hunter Professor of Art and director of the BA+BFA program, is thrilled by the creative opportunities the space creates for Oberlin BA+BFA students and the practicing arts more broadly. 

“In the design of the BA+BFA curriculum, we were really inspired by the interdisciplinary and collaborative ethos of our students,” says Christensen. “It is amazing to have a space that supports and cultivates their experimental practices and their collective art-making. We’re also excited about the possibilities for engagement with the community that the space affords.”