Solange Knowles is expanding her creative legacy into higher education, stepping into a groundbreaking new role at UCLA’s Thornton School of Music. The Grammy-winning artist will serve as the university’s first scholar in residence, guiding students through an innovative, three-year program focused on music, culture, and artistic curation.
Her new course, titled Records of Discovery: Methodologies for Music and Cultural Curatorial Practices, will be developed in collaboration with her multidisciplinary studio, Saint Heron. The program will invite students to explore how sound, context, and community intersect within creative spaces, offering a deep dive into the art of cultural storytelling through music.
Solange is also joining the Dean’s Creative Vanguard Program, an initiative highlighting trailblazers in the arts. She follows fellow visionary Raphael Saadiq, who became the inaugural member of the program in 2024.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Solange opened up about how this new chapter represents a full-circle moment in her journey. “I am a G.E.D. graduate. I was a teenage mom. I was pregnant with my son at 17, so I didn’t get to further my education in the classical sense,” she said. “But I was really blessed and honored to have enriched these other parts of education through my art, through travel and through the globalization of my life. So to be able to have access and broader tools as a scholar in residence, to enrich that and deepen that, is really so exciting for me.”
While embracing academia, Solange continues to nurture her creative roots. In a previous Vogue Australia feature, she revealed that she plans to fully return to music, sharing that she would “probably dedicate myself to it full time next year.” Her most recent album, When I Get Home, released in 2019, cemented her as one of music’s most forward-thinking voices. Now, as she steps into UCLA’s classrooms, she’s poised to inspire a new generation of artists to see sound as not just performance, but purpose.