What if Something Wonderful Happens? The Powerful Potential of the Arts
a Discovery Core Experience
BCORE 117 (Arts & Humanities)
About This Course
A large capacity (up to 60 students), project-based arts course that explores applications of the arts in the service of meaningful, local social change. The arts aren’t limited to aesthetic production or entertainment but are one of many tools at our disposal for navigating complicated lives in a complex world. Like other tools at our disposal–sociology, psychology, spirituality, math, physics, biology–the arts help us understand and contextualize events, people, culture, and even our anxieties and fears and help us visualize potential paths forward.
Why Take this Course?
There is so much in our world today that generates anxiety that we respond to out of fear and apprehension, that when faced in isolation, can magnify and become paralyzing limiting our ability to thrive or even move forward. Shedding light on these fears is a powerful first step in removing their stronghold over us.
What Will We Do in the Course?
Students working in cohorts will select an aspect of life that creates intense anxiety for them (personal, social, political) and will utilize the arts to identify alternate potential responses, positing the question, “What if something wonderful happens?”
Students will engage in academic and community-based research leading to the design and creation of socially engaged art projects on campus near the end of the quarter relying on social media for project research and to increase their audience. Class exercises exploring a range of art forms and historic contexts for these projects will strengthen students’ understanding of the function of the arts and their ability to create high-impact projects that will resonate collectively across our campus. Join and help shape the campus environment as you learn about the true power of the arts.
Professor Gary Carpenter (he/him/his)
Education
- B.F.A. Painting and Drawing, University of Washington
- M.F.A. Painting and Drawing, University of Washington
Contact
Email: glc2@uw.edu
I encourage experimentation, nurture individuality and believe that what we tend to view as failures often carry far more valuable and productive lessons than our successes.
Professor Carpenter