How can the arts affect change in communities? This Engaged Learning course challenges the understanding of what it means to be empowered and how to be an agent of empowerment. Open to all U-M students, this class explores what it means to be empowered and to how to collaborate across communities through participation in arts-based programs in Washtenaw County and Wayne County.

The class fosters students’ ability to apply the expressive arts as a catalyst for change in issues of social justice, including as a healing tool in response to trauma and the impact of racism and classism on equal access to services and educational resources for youth in the United States. Students develop the capacity to collaborate and partner with community members. They plan and facilitate at least one session that includes expressive arts activities through exposure to engaged-learning practices in this class and at their weekly community-based internship at either Telling It (Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor) or at Matrix Theatre (Detroit). Students select an internship at one of these arts and social justice organizations that partner with the class.

This course offers students a collaborative learning experience with Residential College and School of Education faculty, community artists and community members from local agencies serving families and youth. Students explore how this genre affects personal, community, and societal transformation through self-reflection, creative response, and the written and recorded work of arts innovators. For more information check out our website at lsa/umich.edu/tellingit or contact Deb directly.