MPSM365 - 01 - Activism&Socially Engaged Art

Socially engaged art' nurtures the relationship between artist and audience, a relationship that itself becomes the artwork. By designing new ways of being together, we can practice inhabiting new worlds and invite others into possible futures. This is art as political action, as intervention, as social change, as role playing the collective future we want to see. Our classes will create space to practice common methods of community engaged art. The course will offer explorations of work by social practice, interventionist, participatory, and community engaged artists. Students may develop their personal ethics/value system for collaborations with community as part of their artistic practice. In the course, students have the opportunity to deeply investigate their own community at MassArt and are invited to design an offering for the MassArt community by creating their own community engaged project. Finally, students are given the tools to develop a grant proposal for a socially engaged project that could be used in public art grant applications.