Understanding community health through visual, oral, literary, and performing arts

This program introduces students to community health in Oakland through visual, oral, literary, and performing arts. The course will explore how the arts can help us understand a community as a key step in building healthier and more equitable communities. Students will begin to see how the social determinants of health – the conditions in the environment where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age – are represented in the community, and how they affect health, functioning, and quality of life.

Students will engage with a wide range of arts, taking guided walks of murals, attending plays, reading graphic novels, creating and listening to storytelling such as podcasts, and attending and participating in dance performances. They’ll explore a wide range of arts and literary works that help illustrate and unpack issues and topics of social justice, health equity, and how the arts give community agency to promote well-being across the lifespan.

Areas of inspiration for this program include: Oakland Murals, East Bay Graphic Novelists, Paint the Town Program, Urban Artist Talk