The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts will be located at 13th and Q streets on Nebraska's city campus, in the heart of vibrant, downtown Lincoln. The Center is expected to open in the Fall of 2019.

Rendering of the Carson Center
The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts will be located at the busy intersection of 13th and Q sts. on campus, serving as the east anchor for the Arts Quadrangle of UNL.

Director Megan Elliott, along with university officials, HDR architects and Carson Center Advisory Board members toured a variety of technology spaces for inspiration, including Pixar, Inc., YouTube Spaces, Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (also known as the d.school), Technicolor Experience Center, and California College of the Arts, among many others.

As a result, the Carson Center space will be a place where creativity, play and collaboration will spark ideas. New projects and new businesses will be born.

Our new space:

  • Supports and facilitates active seminar, workshop and tutorial teaching and learning.
  • Is flexible and accommodates whole-group and project-based teaching and learning modes – including furnishings and equipment that is flexible and accommodates a diverse range of pedagogies and learning styles, and technological needs.
  • Maximizes potential for collaboration, communication and interaction among students, teachers, alumni, donors, entrepreneurs and industry, both individually and in teams.
  • Promotes student engagement and maximizes opportunities for experiential learning.
  • Offers informal learning and meeting spaces that are integrated with formal learning zones, which creates a community of inter-disciplinary learners, peer-to-peer teachers and entrepreneurs.
  • Has meeting, eating and play zones that foster creative collisions.
  • Has walls which can be seen through, written on and opened up.
  • Has two Emerging Media Arts Labs for shooting, motion capture, data capture, etc.
  • Has an Audio Lab
  • Has Internet 2 connectivity.
  • Embodies sustainability through practice.
  • Promotes a healthy lifestyle by being bike and commute friendly.