Social Equity,
Inclusion and
Justice
Department of Performance, Play & Design Statement on Social Equity, Inclusion and Justice
UC Santa Cruz is an Hispanic Serving and Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander serving Institution (HSI/AANAPISI). The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.” (for more information on land acknowledgment please go here). We acknowledge the harm that settler colonization has caused and acknowledge ways we as a higher education institution and department have benefited from and perpetuated this harm. We are committed to performance, scholarship, and pedagogy that affirms Indigenous sovereignty and transforms the relationships between land and bodies, hearts and minds.
The UCSC Department of Performance, Play & Design (PPD) acknowledges unequivocally that Black Lives Matter. We are committed to an anti-racist and decolonial educational ethos that fosters an artistic environment that is accessible to and in solidarity with communities fighting for justice. We acknowledge that the multiplicity and intersectionality of gender, race, cultural affiliation, citizenship status, disability, neurodiversity, sexuality, religion, and economic class is necessary for excellence in our field. We continue to be critical of how white supremacy, settler colonialism, ableism, transphobia, classism, and hetero-patriarchy show up in our curriculum, productions, and hiring practices, as we acknowledge that oppressive ideas and practices have resulted in past harm and that undoing these practices is vital to our students, scholarship, and performance.
Mission Statement
The UCSC Department of Performance, Play & Design collectively embodies a process of rigorous experimentation and socially conscious analysis to create equitable, accessible, and interdisciplinary works and scholarship. We are deeply committed to practices, research, and teaching that speak to the current moment, disrupting oppressive narratives of the past and present, and re-centering historically marginalized communities through narratives, structures, aesthetics, ritual, engagement, and play.
We strive in our department to put our practice at the forefront of the evolving cultures and identities of our society by immersing students in design, production, history, theory, and craft. We integrate these aspects with intersectional feminist, decolonial, and new media strategies and principles to help shape the performance-makers of the future. PPD students are a combined cohort that blends interest in traditional methods with new technologies, defying traditional categorization: experimenting with digital and physical game design, exploring theory on our multiple stages, learning their craft in our labs, studios and shops, and bringing activism, artistry, and agency to their work on campus, online, and beyond.
We are currently engaged in a multi-year, top-to-bottom review of our curriculum to center our pedagogy on antiracist, antisexist, antihomophobic, and inclusive approaches to the art and craft of performance and games.
Our Shared Values. As a collective working to integrate this perspective across our curricula, practices and processes, we unequivocally acknowledge that Black Lives Matter. We are committed to an anti-racist and decolonial educational ethos that fosters an artistic environment that is accessible to, and in solidarity with, communities fighting for justice. We acknowledge that the multiplicity and intersectionality of gender, race, cultural affiliation, citizenship status, disability, neurodiversity, sexuality, religion, and economic class is necessary for excellence in our field. We continue to be critical of how white supremacy, settler colonialism, ableism, transphobia, classism, and hetero-patriarchy show up in our curriculum, productions, and hiring practices, as we acknowledge that oppressive ideas and practices have resulted in past harm and that undoing these practices is vital to our students, scholarship, and performance.
This Statement represents the values that define our community of scholars, artists, professors, lecturers, staff, and students. It is displayed prominently on our website. However, we acknowledge that saying “Black Lives Matter,” noting that we are an HSI/AANAPISI, or providing a land acknowledgement does not constitute real progressive action on social equity, inclusion and justice issues facing our community.
Our Goals. We define our goals according to the key terms of social equity, inclusion and justice. That is to say, we commit to increasing the number of BIPOC and LGBTQI2S+ faculty, staff, and students in the Department through recruitment and retention; we challenge and respond to bias, harassment, and discrimination; we support a policy of equal opportunity for all persons; and we make deliberate efforts to create a climate where where all individuals feel a sense of belonging.