PSU’s Art and Social Practice MFA defines what it means to be an artist in society. In our three-year, flexible-residency program, you’ll combine individual research, group work, and experiential learning to find new ways to engage with your art and the community. Our program’s blend of critical and professional practice, progressive pedagogy, collaborative social engagement, and transdisciplinary exploration produces an immersive educational experience.
We encourage you to shape the direction of your education as you connect your art practice to research in the field of Social Practice through elective coursework and community partnerships, promoting cross-disciplinary engagement.
Graduating students each produce a public graduate project, a publication exploring a relevant connection to their practice, and a public artist lecture that surveys their work in the program.
At Portland State University, we are pioneers in the field of social practice. Our continually evolving program, the oldest running Social Practice MFA program in the world, offers a unique combination of experiential learning, seminar discussions, and collaborative project making with strong ties to the Portland community as well as with organizations and individuals globally. We were recently rated as one of the top 15 art programs in the country by Artsy.
Our program offers publication opportunities through the Social Practice Reference Points book series and SoFA Journal, opportunities to engage with ongoing community partnerships such as KSMoCA (King School Museum of Contemporary Art) and the Columbia River Correctional Institution. We also facilitate community-building events for our students, such as Assembly, an annual social practice conference where participants shape the collective experience by contributing to dialogue, group projects, workshops, and publications.
When you graduate, you’ll publicly present your graduate project, which is a critical step toward becoming a working artist when you’ve graduated.
Alumni from our program have secured tenure track teaching jobs, adjunct teaching jobs, have produced public art projects, and participated in major exhibitions. They work with museum education programs and non-profits, have started businesses, worked with governments, and have received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships.