Students may continue to declare this minor through the end of Spring 2026. This minor will no longer be available to be declared beginning Fall 2026. All declared students will be fully supported to complete their minor.
The Social Practice minor is offered through Parsons School of Design.
This minor provides a pathway for undergraduate students to pursue socially engaged projects that initiate exchange, envision new social relations, and provoke individual/collective actions. This is an invitation to blur the lines between object making, performance, political activism, community organizing, guerrilla architecture, environmentalism, and investigative journalism. This approach to art making fosters collaboration between artists and broader publics. Drawing on the strengths of The New School's history of engagement with social justice, the Social Practice minor taps into our faculty's diverse fieldwork, exposing students to multidisciplinary methodologies for their own research. A progression of lab and studio seminars provides models for developing media strategies and forms of social cooperation. This minor will prepare students to conceptualize participatory projects, articulate narratives, position themselves ethically, and cultivate networks that support poetic and political visions.
Examples of social practice include Theaster Gates' Dorchester Projects (winner of The New School's inaugural Vera List Center Prize), Mel Chin's Fundred Dollar Project,
Estudio Teddy Cruz's Casa Familiar: Living Rooms at the Border, and Jeanne van Heeswijk's Freehouse.
Course availability may vary from semester to semester. Some courses may be in development and offered at a later time. Students seeking to pursue alternative coursework to fulfill the minor should consult with their advisors.
*Students who have already completed one of these courses, or will do so for their major, should instead select another course in the subject area Social Justice Issues and Community-Based Practice.
A student who has completed this minor should be able to demonstrate
Minors are available to all undergraduate students at The New School. For questions regarding this minor's curriculum, including requests for course substitutions, please contact Melanie Crean, Associate Professor of Art, Media, and Technology, at creanm@newschool.edu.
General guidelines for declaring a minor are available here. Current students can declare or change a minor by logging in to my.newschool.edu, clicking on the Academics tab, and then clicking on the link to Major/Minor Declarations.
Contact your Student Success advisor to discuss how a minor will fit with your degree requirements.
Declare or change a minor on my.newschool.edu in the Academics tab.
The New School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.