This week, we received the (somewhat shocking) news that a beloved 119-year-old art and design institution, California College of the Arts (CCA), will be closing in mid-2027, immediately following the 2026-27 academic year. If you identify with being part of the arts and design communities, this feels like a BIG loss because it is one. But…it’s also a signal.

This moment exposes deeper cracks in how creative education has been funded, structured, and sustained for years. When institutions can no longer hold, the answer isn’t nostalgia or rescue fantasies. It’s redesign, reimagine, reawaken!

A design shift begins when we stop preserving broken models and start rethinking the systems beneath them. What remains isn’t a brand or a building, but people, practices, and shared standards of craft. Although I am admittedly an optimist and designer through and through, my take on this is that those are the raw materials for what comes next.

Read on for some clarification and depth…

— Justin Lokitz

This last week was a tough one for many of us. The announcement that CCA, a 119-year-old pillar of Bay Area creative education, will cease operating as an independent institution after the 2026-27 academic year hit the design and arts communities hard. The long and short of it is that CCA’s campus will transfer to Vanderbilt University, which plans to launch a new full-time academic campus there beginning in 2027–28. And…as of this writing, we do not yet know what Vanderbilt will teach, and whether that (much larger) institution will carry on some of the arts and design pedagogy started at CCA.

News like this triggers the same emotional response that anyone who cares about craft, culture, and community feels when something familiar begins to disappear: disbelief, frustration, sadness. The cessation of a storied institution feels like a rupture in the cultural landscape. But…if you zoom out, this kind of moment also reveals the nature of design shifts: intentional transformations that can reshape systems, even when they emerge from disruption.

The forces behind the closure are structural, not sentimental. CCA joined a growing list of specialized institutions facing declining enrollment, rising costs, and financial models that don’t align with current demographics and labor markets.  In that sense, the shock is symptomatic of broader challenges in how higher education, especially in creativity-driven fields, sustains itself.

If we’re being honest, the arts and design ecosystem has been signaling stress for years. Independent studios close, galleries tighten budgets, and artists juggle gigs just to stay afloat. Institutions, like CCA, that once seemed permanent suddenly look vulnerable. That’s the context in which this announcement lands.

Transformation after a loss is not the same as nostalgia or restoration. There’s a difference between trying to get back to what was and building toward what’s next.

The Vanderbilt transition is obviously not a perfect preservation of CCA as it existed, nor should it be mistaken for one. Instead, it represents a pivot in how creative education might be structured in a city like San Francisco…perhaps embedded now within a larger research university with resources and interdisciplinary reach. 

That matters because the shift here isn’t about saving a specific brand. It’s about rethinking how creative talent is nurtured, connected to other fields like tech, entrepreneurship, and innovation, and supported by infrastructure that matches economic realities. CCA’s model couldn’t sustain itself. A larger entity that teaches similar subjects and fosters a maker’s mindset just might (and that’s a BIG might) make the work of future artists and designers more viable, not less.

What I say next is framed as optimism, because that’s who I am. Anyone is totally welcome to disagree with me. But…I believe to my core that, when it comes to CCA’s legacy, design shifts manifest in how our communities adapt. Some of the ways this might/could/should happen are…

To me, this feels very much like the real-world version of a business model innovation technique called “epicenter innovation” I’ve used for a long time. Epicenter Innovation uses the tried and true Business Model Canvas to first plot out the current business model of any organization (even a dying one, like CCA’s). Then, using that business model, we remove elements and sometimes entire building blocks, forcing participants to co-create something wholly new from what’s left.

In this case, if we remove everything related to CCA except the students, value propositions, and community aspects, we have incredibly useful ingredients that can be reused, reshaped, reshared, and reimagined as part of something new…like wholly new, sustainable business model options that employ the best parts of what’s left.

In other words, when something ends, what remains is not just memory, but network, skills, and relationships. That’s the real seedbed for what comes next!

The closure of CCA’s independent operations is a blow to its students, faculty, staff, and the community at large. But it’s also a moment to ask: what kind of creative education ecosystem do we want? How do we build pathways that don’t hinge on outdated business models? How do we ensure that art and design remain integral to civic life, not sidelined because they’re hard to monetize?

Hope doesn’t come from comforting narratives. It comes from rigorous acknowledgment of what’s changing and intentional action toward what’s next. In that sense, design shifts aren’t just reactive. They’re proactive strategies for reimagining systems that no longer work.

I, for one, am ready to build the next version. Who’s with me?

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