The first students in the country to graduate college with degrees in Social Justice and the Arts will cross the stage June 12, as new alumni of an innovative program at Portland State University. 

Launched two years ago by a veteran jazz pianist and a professor of conflict resolution, the curriculum combines music, theater, film, architecture, art history and design with civic engagement and advocacy. Students have the opportunity to become change agents.

This is the only undergraduate degree program in the country that incorporates all the arts with social justice. University of San Francisco offers an undergraduate degree in performing arts and social justice. University of Iowa and University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee each have a certificate program. Arts for All at University of Maryland integrates the arts with other disciplines. 

Many Portlanders know Darrell Grant as a jazz pianist and composer who has recorded six albums. Throughout his career, Grant has integrated music with creating change and connecting with community. This led him to create the Artist as Citizen Initiative at PSU in 2016, along with Suzanne Savaria, a colleague in the School of Music. They worked this social engagement opportunity into starting the Social Justice & the Arts degree program. Amanda Singer, who teaches Conflict Resolution at PSU and directs the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Project, joined forces with them.

Singer and Grant are co-coordinators of the Social Justice & the Arts program. Since it launched, Singer has seen interest grow among students.

“Obviously it’s an interesting time in the United States to be overtly addressing issues of social injustice,” Singer said. “There are more and more to address, certainly, but less public support and permission to do this kind of work. So I don’t know how that will necessarily influence the longevity of our program. Currently, there’s no risk of it diminishing in any way but I think the students we get are hungry to merge creativity with activism and are so desperate for hope in the world.”

She said many students discovered the program after taking a class for their art credit for general education or for majors in unrelated fields. 

“They get really, super excited and activated,” Singer said. “They may or may not take any more classes from us but are truly transformed from the opportunity to think about these questions that we’re pondering and these different ways that we’re engaging.” 

The goal is for students who complete the program to learn how to think critically about making a difference in their own lives and the larger world. And they develop the skills to creatively express their commitment to social justice.

“I think it’s been wildly successful so far, in terms of students really loving the classes and the opportunity to pursue this academically,” Singer said. “Really using the arts to provoke connection and critical thinking and engagement and humanity and dignity and all the things. We’re just desperate as a nation, as a society, to find ways to connect around those things.”

Singer and Grant teach the Artist as Citizen core course. During the first term, students learn about social change, explore terminology and mechanisms that build and interfere with social justice, Singer said. Then in the second term, they study historical and international social movements. At that point, they build a social change movement within the PSU community that identifies targets and makes demands.

The third term involves working with a community partner around a social issue. This year, students worked on housing insecurity with Gather:Make:Shelter, an arts-based nonprofit focused on homelessness. This part of the course involves developing a creative production or installation that seeks to address the area explored, according to Singer. 

“The projects that always stand out are the students’ creative responses,” Grant said. “Within the Artist as Citizen classes, rather than writing essays in response to readings or prompts, we ask the students to make a creative response: either write a poem or draw a picture or create a piece of music or something like that. It’s always really moving to see what they create. It helps us know them more deeply and it helps them know each other more deeply.”

The graduates

Allen Myers and Matisse Geselle graduate in June. Both found their way to this interdisciplinary degree through the arts.

“I’ve worked in film, I’ve worked with nonprofits and really, this — for me — was something I saw and I couldn’t look away from,” Myers said. “I decided to go back to school and get a bachelor’s degree, something I never finished. I dropped out, I traveled the world for about 15 years. I had an unconventional learning journey that took me around the world and into a career with filmmaking and nonprofit work.” 

In two years with the program, Myers has created two films as part of coursework. “What is Social Justice?” an eight-minute film, is making the rounds at film festivals, and was shown at one in Norway. The film weaves together community reflections, student artwork, and a collective poetic response to explore the layered meaning of social justice.

“In a perfect community, you have equal rights, equal dignity, equal respect and equal opportunity,” one person in the film says.

“Social justice is something that has been stolen and stripped away,” another says.

Myers’ other film, “Light Leaks & Memory,” explores how stories survive across time, how we remember collectively, and what it means to engage with film as a living archive, Myers said. This short film and poem were created during his time at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna as part of the “Secrets of Nature” and “Cinema Preservations” study abroad courses through PSU. 

Myers shared a list of topics discussed in classes that included art practices for engagement, theater and music.

“We discussed the Bad Bunny Half Time show, we discussed literature, female authors in war torn countries,” Myers said. “We discussed elections, voter rights, voter suppression. We discussed poetry, we discussed the role of money and capitalism in art and social justice.”

Myers has explored the role the arts play and what people can do together. For him, being in this community has been the whole point of going back to school.

Matisse Geselle discovered the program after completing two years at Portland Community College. Geselle plays piano and created an album for his graduation thesis. Last fall, he studied at the University of Capetown and plans to return there for a Master’s degree in African music performance. He will use the album as part of his application.

“In the African music department at University of Capetown, it’s mostly Xhosa people and a lot of music was traditional Xhosa music but accompanied by piano or drums,” Geselle said. “I played piano for that music and there’s also an instrument called the uhadi that I learned. That’s an influence and part of my album for my thesis project.”

Geselle enjoyed the discussion-based classes in the Social Justice & the Arts program and the opportunity to be out in the world doing things.

“Beyond the institution of PSU, it is not the same as other programs where you take your classes and pass the tests,” Geselle said. “I took a class last spring and now I’m doing an internship at the  King School Museum of Contemporary Art. PSU students mentor elementary students and it’s so amazing. It’s so important for kids to know there’s someone who cares for them who’s going to show up every week for an hour.” 

Community outreach

Students collaborate on community-based projects during their practicums with the program, in addition to a PSU requirement that students complete what the college calls a “capstone project.”

One student working on his practicum with Gather:Make:Shelter has been supporting artists during studio time in the maker space and the art gallery, Singer said. He helps participants develop artistic skills and abilities. He is also providing a fair amount of support for the administrative aspect of the organization, learning about running a nonprofit and building relationships with community organizations and donors.  

“All the students at the end of class are saying ‘I walk down the street completely differently in terms of who I encounter and how I understand people’s agency and creative capacity,’” Singer said. “It’s kind of mind blowing.”

Another partner is the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art, an art museum and social practice art project in partnership with the K-5 public school. PSU students support elementary students in artistic expression and help develop programs that highlight student work, Singer said. 

“I was helping facilitate workshops with the Deep Time Collective, mentoring a 4th grader, as well as spending a lot of time talking to staff throughout the school collecting stories, memories and photos of the school to help flesh out a timeline project that is in the entrance hall,” Geselle said.

The practicum piece is essential to the program, according to Grant. 

“Students in the Social Justice & the Arts program have learned about their own sense of agency and the power of their own creativity as well as the history of art’s role in social justice movements over time,” Grant said. “I’ve seen them grow their own sense of their capacity to be creative. I’ve seen them engage with community organizations in new ways and to think more broadly about issues of social justice.”

With a strong start under their belts, the coordinators look forward to continuing to grow the program.

“Next year is a critical one for the future of the Social Justice & the Arts degree program,” Grant said. “We are really looking at how we reach sustainability. We need to fund the program going forward and really kind of see how we cement it within the curriculum in the College of the Arts. So next year I’ll be doing a lot of thinking about future planning and how we make this program vibrant for the next five to ten years.”

This article appears in June 10, 2026.