Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA)
The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) is an institute for artistic research and education in the arts.
The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) is a research institute within the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University embodying the partnership between Leiden University and the University of the Arts The Hague (the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Art). In addition to research in and through the arts, the ACPA offers academic courses for arts students and education in the arts for students of Leiden University, as well as organising various cultural events at the cutting edge of artistic and academic disciplines.
Research
The ACPA provides an environment in which musicians, artists and designers conduct research on the basis of their own artistic practice. By studying their own practice, artist-researchers develop new insights and methods, while at the same time exploring the theoretical underpinning of their work, which frequently generates new works of art. The aim of the artistic research is to deepen and broaden the students’ vision of their own artistic practice.
An important component of the research at the ACPA, and one that is unique in the Netherlands, is the 'PhD in the Arts’: students can conduct research at the ACPA to earn a doctorate from Leiden University. ACPA’s core academic staff consists of three professors and three university lecturers. Together they are responsible for the research and for supervising the more than sixty PhD candidates studying at the ACPA. The ACPA offers two doctoral programmes in the arts: docARTES for music (in association with the Orpheus Institute in Ghent) and PhDArts for art and design.