Taught By:
Leslie Robison
Professor and Dean, School of Creative Arts & Letters
Visual Arts Department
Flagler College
Read profile here.
Course Description:
Socially Engaged Art explores relationships between artist, viewer, and social context. Rather than specializing in any one approach to making artifacts, students in this course will craft art experiences that serve as agents of human interactivity, dialogue, and/or political change.
Nicolas Bourriaud defines Relational Art (an early label for Socially Engaged Art or Social Practice) as, “A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.” This means that students in this class will collaborate with each other and with the public, both on and off campus, as participants in the process of creating art experiences.
Due to the social nature of this work, the class also focuses on how service learning can benefit both the community and the artist through socially engaged art practices. Community-Integrative Education, also called Service Learning, is a pedagogical practice that allows students to learn a subject outside of the classroom, through active community engagement, usually in “service” to a group or charity organization that needs help. The combination of service learning and socially engaged art allows students to act as whole citizens- students, artists, individuals, and community members- all at once, while also strengthening or creating new ties between disciplines, and between the college and the local community.
