PSU’s Art and Social Practice MFA is a 3-year, flexible residency program that combines individual research, group work, and experiential learning. The program’s blend of critical and professional practice, progressive pedagogy, collaborative social engagement, and transdisciplinary exploration produces an immersive educational environment.

Within these pages you will find digital content related to The Art + Social Practice Archive, which was founded and organized by Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem, Roshani Thakore, Lauren Moran and Harrell Fletcher, and with the help of Cristine Paschild, the Head of Special Collections & University Archives, in honor of the program’s 10 year anniversary.

This is the first public archive of ephemera related to art and social practice and “is an artistic approach that emphasizes collaboration, shared authorship, public participation, site-specificity, and interdisciplinarity, is often presented in non-art locations, and has no media or formal boundaries” (Harrell Fletcher).

The archive is built around project materials connected to program collaborations, students and alumni to celebrate all the work that has been built from the program, and hopes to gather materials from socially engaged art projects from all over the world. The original accession of the archive focuses on work related to artists who have graduated or who are a part of the Art + Social Practice program, but as future artwork comes in, the archives content will expand to include socially engaged artists from all over the world. As we know, it is the only official archive for social practice ephemera.

In addition to the digital content found here, the Art +Social Practice Archive can be accessed by contacting Special Collections at the Portland State University Library (specialcollections@pdx.edu).