The Arts Initiative begins with students, the heart and soul of the university. The initiative seeks to deepen the presence of the arts in all arenas of undergraduate and graduate student life.

The Arts Initiative seeks to develop programs to better attract arts-oriented students to the university by shaping first encounters with the arts through freshman and sophomore experiences and hands-on seminars, integrating the arts in the curriculum, "mainstreaming" the arts bringing them into courses and fields not normally associated with the arts, enlivening residential life by bringing visiting artists into student residences for meals, public conversations, and coaching student artists, and fostering student performers and audiences by providing more opportunities for students to perform on campus and experience the arts beyond Stanford.