Public Art and Social Justice: Mapping Mural Art and Narratives

• Fulfills the studio requirement for the Certificate in Urban Humanities.
• Info session recording here.

This studio course focuses on an important part of social movements: public cultural production. The recent movements for Black lives, struggles against gentrification and police violence has led to a growth of public art/muralism in urban locations other than public/business walls. This humanities studio documented and mapped murals and other forms of public art produced in Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond California. Students conducted interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with art crews, muralists, and artists who are producing public art across the Bay Area. In collaboration with artist, students produced public web galleries that used Augmented Reality technology to embed sound bites of interviews or information on the murals.  Additionally, students documented these artists and the art through the production of a series of podcasts dedicated towards centering the voices of artists and community partners furthering public cultural production.