mfa in environmental art and social practice

The Environmental Art and Social Practice MFA program (EASP) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, welcomes applications now for admission in the fall of 2023.

We look forward to inviting our third cohort of students to join us next year as we continue to build the EASP learning and research community. The linked urgencies of systemic social inequality and climate crises drive our research, our curriculum, our pedagogy, and our vision for this program, which aims to engage students in creating positive change through creative practice.

This two-year, residential program seeks prospective applicants who want to develop their artwork in relation to social and environmental justice questions, contexts and communities. Headed by internationally-recognized artists and including affiliate faculty from across campus, the program integrates the resources of a renowned public research university with the Art Department’s mission of educating and training students in cross-disciplinary, multimedia art practices.

Working individually and collaboratively, in the studio and in the field, students are invited to experiment with a breadth of approaches, art mediums, research methods, theoretical frameworks and technologies ranging from the traditional to the most contemporary. The EASP program’s interdisciplinary emphasis also encourages students to engage with departments, divisions, centers, labs, and faculty across the university to deepen and enrich their research, as well as to partner with groups and organizations outside the university to create and realize their projects. Environmental and social justice issues are shared globally, and the EASP program is committed to an international perspective that is grounded in local conditions, wherever local might be.

The University of California, Santa Cruz, is located in the unceded territory of the Awaswas speaking people whose descendants identify as members of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. The EASP program respects the ongoing work of the Amah Mutsun in re-building relationships of reciprocity with the land and aims to center these, and other, Indigenous practices and perspectives in its pedagogical commitments.

Curriculum The EASP program offers a sequence of core courses in practice-based research, theoretical, methodological, and historical foundations of the field, and arts pedagogies. Students gain practical experience through direct engagement with places and communities and hone their skills of critical analysis, while developing their own creative directions through their thesis projects. Group critique and production courses and faculty advising and mentorship, as well as electives drawn from the university at large, provide support for thesis projects.