UC Santa Barbara hosted its first annual Arts Walk Wednesday, a collaboration between departments to showcase the university’s creative culture.
Visitors walked from building to building on campus exploring the full spectrum of student talent.
Exhibits included open rehearsal with the flute choir, readings from writing students from the College of Creative Studies, and a gallery of work by senior art students.
Some displays helped visitors learn about upcoming art events on campus.
Alessandra Albanese, a first-year student in a theater and dance master’s program, sat with a typewriter in front of the Theatre & Dance building.
She promoted her upcoming play, The Sex Dungeon Speed Dating Spectacular, part of the New Works Lab, by offering to write love, hate, or dirty letters to those who approached her.
Albanese said the event helps provide perspective to members of campus who typically aren’t exposed to art.
“I work in tech and I think there’s a lot of separation between STEM and the humanities and arts. All these tech companies have unconscious bias initiatives and are really trying to incorporate diversity into their company culture and vision. Coming from the background where I know how to articulate different kinds of marginalization is valuable,” she said.
Fourth-year philosophy and theater student Michael Lin was hopeful that in the future, the Arts Walk could invite STEM departments to express their creative side.
“I think the next step would be to incorporate the physics and math departments. They could do some cool displays of their own,” Lin said.
— Noozhawk intern Dhiraj Nallapaneni can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkSociety, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Become a fan of Noozhawk on Facebook.