This workshop takes a field-study approach to investigate ways that artists and designers expand their practice through social engagement, community processes and participatory actions. Such an approach is typically transdisciplinary and collaborative across liberal art and art/design disciplines. Rather than the product of a single artist/designer working within an isolated studio, social practice projects are driven by the desire to connect and look outside oneself in meaningful and tangible ways, seeking to positively impact daily life within specific communities. The workshop will expand on methodologies and histories of socially engaged art, build awareness of local histories, social forms, and a nuanced understanding of the relationship between social justice, poetics and the ethics of cultural production in the public sphere.  Students will learn a set of critical tools and modes of working in this expansive genre that can help a designer/artist work in the field and diversify their practice. Through assigned texts, case studies and studio assignments students will challenge the boundaries between “art/design” and “life”.The first curriculum in social practice was launched here at CCA in 2008. It was in direct response to the broad activities of artists and designers at the turn of the 21st century that invited critical exchange, imagined new social relationships, and provoked individual and collective actions. We will meet with CCA faculty and Bay Area Artists working in the area of social practice across architecture, design and fine art divisions, as well as pioneers across the country who helped establish the field. If funding and time permits we will road trip to LA + Joshua Tree to meet with pioneers in the field.

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