Socially Engaged Art Making in Northern Ireland
This 6-week, 6-credit, multidisciplinary summer course combines synchronous and asynchronous learning in the US with community-engaged art-making in Northern Ireland.
This program provides an opportunity for students across all majors to travel to Northern Ireland, a location that has wrestled for years with conflict, violence, sectarianism, and marginalization to explore the artist’s role in peace building.
Students participate in seminars, lectures, workshops, and experiential field work. Projects are developed through a site-specific residency and delivered in collaboration with our core partner, The Metropolitan Arts Center (The MAC) in Belfast.
The course includes meetings with art professionals and excursions to sites relevant to the intersection of artistic creation and peace building. Students will also have the opportunity to engage in authentic cross-cultural experiences by eating in local restaurants, attending art exhibits, theatre performances, monuments, museums, and visiting nearby towns.
Students stay in shared housing in Belfast’s central Cathedral Quarter, three blocks from the MAC and close to historic buildings as well as restaurants and night life. Students will have single rooms with access to a a shared bathroom and kitchen.
Here is some information to help you learn what it is like to live and travel in the UK, given your identity markers.