UGA Arts Collaborative

Evolve in the African State of Mind: Installation

Evolve in the African State of Mind
Multimedia installation by Nkululeko Zungu
April 28 – 30
Lamar Dodd Building Room S390

Arts Collaborative Research Affiliate Nkululeko Zungu finds pleasure in exploring music from traditional Classical to modern Electronic. He writes:

Music is a powerful tool that shapes societies largely through entertainment and, more importantly, through communication and the preservation of culture. Identifiers play a significant role within cultures, influencing composers’ perspectives on music. African thought leaders like Ngugi wa Thiong’o encourage African writers to see themselves in terms of their identity, as opposed to the various colonial experiences encountered on the African continent.

This recording project explores the clicks from two South African languages, isiZulu and isiXhosa, to help me reposition myself within cultural identities. Furthermore, exploring clicks through modern technologies opens up the possibility of creating large works from simple building blocks. African musicians have kept these clicks within the text; thus, meaning remains in the language.
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Reading Room: With federal funding in question, artists can navigate a perilous future by looking to the past

With federal funding in question, artists can navigate a perilous future by looking to the past
By Johanna K. Taylor and Mary McAvoy
https://theconversation.com/with-federal-funding-in-question-artists-can-navigate-a-perilous-future-by-looking-to-the-past-252453

As scholars who study the arts, activism and policy, we’re watching the latest developments with apprehension. But we think it’s important to point out that while the U.S. government has never been a global leader of arts funding, American artists have always been innovative, creative and scrappy during times of political turmoil.

Creativity and Collaboration

Creativity and Collaboration
Fall 2025 GradFIRST Seminar
https://grad.uga.edu/gradfirst/seminars/

Open to first-year graduate students

Creativity and collaboration are fundamental to addressing today’s socio-environmental challenges. This seminar will include arts-based, STEM-friendly activities developed by UGA researchers from the arts, humanities, and sciences designed to help students to think creatively, to collaborate across disciplines, and to work with people with different perspectives, knowledge, and values. It will be an engaging and fun way to enhance the creativity that you bring to your own graduate work and your capacity to effectively participate in collaborative teams.

Facilitator: Mark Callahan (UGA Arts Collaborative)

Fridays
1:50-2:40 PM
CRN:60768

2025 a2ru National Conference

2025 a2ru Conference
Call for Proposals
https://a2ru.org/event/2025-a2ru-conference-creative-futures/

a2ru’s next annual conference will take place October 23-25, 2025 at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. This will be an in-person conference.

This year’s theme, “Creative Futures: Driving Interdisciplinary Innovation Through the Arts,” explores how future-thinking in the arts can reimagine and redefine disciplines, collaboration, and the academy to better meet the demands of our rapidly shifting technological, ecological, and political landscape. How can we center creativity in the interdisciplinary problem solving needed to meet these current challenges? How can we use the arts to advance our goals of sustainability, social justice, and human flourishing? In this moment, how can the arts illuminate what it means to be a human being?

Nature Writing as Ecologists

Nature Writing as Ecologists: Literary Salon & Zine Release
Tuesday, May 6 from 5-7 PM
Ecology Building room 117

Ecology graduate students will share original works of creative writing on the theme of “nature writing as ecologists.’” Come ready to listen, mingle, and enjoy! Supported in part by an Arts Collaborative Mini Grant.

Zero Waste UGA Screening: The Cigarette Surfboard

Zero Waste UGA Film Screening: The Cigarette Surfboard
Wednesday, April 23 from 5 to 7:30 PM
Cine, 234 W. Hancock Ave.

Join Zero Waste UGA for a free screening of The Cigarette Surfboard and panel discussion with the filmmaker in a conversation about ocean stewardship and strategies to reduce single use plastics. The evening will include Regarding the Discarded, a temporary exhibition of art that engages material reuse and reduction.

https://www.thecigarettesurfboard.com

After a young designer realizes that a surfboard – which he crafted from thousands of littered cigarette butts picked up off California beaches – could captivate the eyes of millions across the globe, he decides to use it as the impetus to do something more. The Cigarette Surfboards become a platform to spark ocean stewardship and the symbol of a campaign to hold Big Tobacco accountable for their toxic, plastic waste. Surfing is the medium, but the message is universal.

Zero Waste UGA is an interdisciplinary experiential learning initiative to foster a culture of sustainability through waste reduction. The UGA campus will function as a living laboratory to support teaching, research, service and outreach, student engagement, and operational innovations toward a circular economy.

Event sponsors: UGA Office of Sustainability, UGA Sustainability Certificate, UGA Marine Extension / Sea Grant, UGA Arts Collaborative, UGA Department of Anthropology.