Community Art: Practice and Theory

FaculteitFaculty of Humanities

NiveauBachelor

Studiejaar2026-2027

Beschrijving

Course goals

After completing this course, participants should have:

1. a well-developed understanding of the range of practices that comprise community art around the world;
2. a firm theoretical grounding in the various theoretical and art-historical debates that have shaped both the thinking on and practices of community art in the contemporary moment;
3. an understanding of the work of community artists in relation to urban life, municipal and state governance, local politics and activism;
4. a basic knowledge of the audiovisual techniques and qualitative research methods necessary to conduct research on community art and artists.

After completing the course, participants will be able to:

1. hold informed perspectives and engage in scholarly and mainstream debates on issues arising out of community art and its various forms of social intervention;
2. develop their own theoretical/activist/practitioner perspectives on community art;
3. understand the conceptualization and creative processes involved in community art-making;
4. conduct primary qualitative and audiovisual research on community art practices, particularly in urban contexts;
5. clearly articulate and present their ideas, concepts and research findings in written and oral form, in a video presentation and in an expository paper.

Content

This course provides the student with a critical introduction to the practical and theoretical dimensions of community arts. Community arts can be loosely defined as a way of creating art in which professional artists collaborate more or less intensively with people who do not normally actively engage in the arts. The basis for this practice is a carefully constructed and maintained reciprocal relationship between artists and non-artists, from which original, innovative and socially relevant art emerges. Community art involves all arts disciplines and can be found in all corners of the world: in immigrant working-class areas, in prisons, in rural communities, in (former) war zones, etc. In the Netherlands, for example, it is a rapidly expanding field that operates mostly, but not exclusively, outside of the mainstream or avant-garde. Because it challenges traditional notions of (autonomous) art-making, community art reconfigures existing art theory and criticism in an attempt to validate itself both socially and culturally. The course familiarizes students with the diversity of community arts practices around the world and with the wide range of scholarly perspectives on community arts. As small, multilingual research teams, students will conduct fieldwork in ongoing community arts projects in Utrecht or elsewhere in the Netherlands, film their results, and present this video to the class.

This course is part of the minor Creative Cities.

LAS and TCS students who follow this course as part of the core curriculum of their major, need to complete a compulsory preparation course/assignment. See for more information: https://tcs.sites.uu.nl/

Additional information

Priority rules
This course has priority rules and a waiting list. Your enrolment is guaranteed if you

- are a student in the BA Media and Culture and this course is part of your specialisation (verdiepingspakket)
- are a student in the BA Liberal Arts and Sciences or Taal- en Cultuurstudies and this course is part of your specialisation (kernpakket)
- are enrolled in the Creative Cities minor
- are an exchange student and meet the course’s entry requirements
In all other situations, you will be placed on a waiting list if you enrol in this course. For any remaining slots in the course, lots are drawn among the students on the waiting list.

Schedule
Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final, and may still be modified until the third Wednesday in September.

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