Art and musicking as social action. Do you want to make a difference?

Society is under pressure. Loneliness, inequality, polarisation, and exclusion are no longer abstract concepts, but a daily reality in neighbourhoods and in care and welfare contexts. At the same time, there is a growing need for new forms of connection, agency, and collective imagination.

Do you want to make a difference? is a transdisciplinary minor for students who do not want to remain on the sidelines, but who wish to actively and artistically contribute to social change.

In this minor, you collaborate with communities, social organisations, and students from other disciplines on real-world societal challenges. You explore how co-creative forms of musicking and art-making can empower, connect, and bring people together, and how art can help make societal issues visible and open for dialogue. Not therapeutically, not top-down or solution-driven, but relational, participatory, and attentive to ethics and power.

You learn to work in field labs, develop co-creative projects together with participants, conduct practice-based (action) research, and share your work publicly. The focus is not on producing perfect outcomes, but on meaningful processes, collaboration, and impact.

This minor is for you if you:

see art as a social and societal force;

want to enrich care and social work through creative, collective practices;

want to learn how to work with difference and complexity;

do not only want to learn about change, but also want to initiate it.

Do you want to make a difference?

Then this minor offers you a place to explore how you, together with others, can make a difference.

The central learning outcomes of this minor are:

1.      The student takes ownership of their own learning process by formulating personal learning goals, reflecting on them, and adjusting their professional actions accordingly.

2.      The student acts professionally, ethically, and context-sensitively in co-creative practices within societal contexts and is able to justify their choices.

3.      The student collaborates effectively in transdisciplinary learning and working communities and contributes to shared ownership and collective outcomes.

4.      The student investigates societal issues through practice-based and participatory approaches and uses research insights to design and refine co-creative practices.

5.      The student reflects on their own professional identity and positions themselves as a future professional within societal contexts.

This minor is open to all students. Affinity with art, music, and care is an advantage; skills are useful but not required.

This minor is grounded in insights from the research groups Music in Context and Image in Context. In addition, it primarily draws on open-access literature that is easily accessible, such as:

Agres, K. R., & Chen, Y. (2025). The impact of performing arts on mental health, social connection, and creativity in university students: A randomised controlled trial. BMC Public Health, 25, 1628.

Fancourt, D. (Ed.). (2023). Arts-based therapies, practices, and interventions in health. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, 23, 351.

Garry, F., MacFarlane, A., Phelan, H., Hassan, A., Salsberg, J., MacCarron, P., & Papyan, A. (2025). Music and singing as arts-based methods to facilitate participatory spaces for co-production in migration health research: A mixed methods study. Social Science & Medicine, 386, 118453.

de Kock, L., Groot, B. C., Lindenberg, J., & Struiksma, G. (2023). Making invisible care visible: Ethics and aesthetics of care in participatory arts practices in times of COVID-19. Research in Drama Education, 28(4), 506–526.

Laukkanen, A., Jaakonaho, L., Fast, H., & Koivisto, T. A. (2022). Negotiating boundaries: Reflections on the ethics of arts-based and artistic research in care contexts. Arts & Health, 14(3), 341–354.

Sonke, J., Pesata, V., Colverson, A., Morgan-Daniel, J., Rodriguez, A. K., Carroll, G. D., … Karim, H. (2025). Relationships between arts participation, social cohesion, and well-being: An integrative review of evidence. Frontiers in Public Health, 13, 1589693.

Talwar, S., & Sajnani, N. (2022). Proposing a justice approach to ethics of care in art psychotherapy. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 79, 101912.

Assessment within this minor is developmental and portfolio-based. Students demonstrate the achievement of the learning outcomes through a coherent portfolio that includes reflections, documentation of practice, research findings, and critical justification of choices made.

Assessment follows the applicable Hanze regulations and is aligned with the learning outcomes of the minor. Evaluation is carried out by examiners from different disciplines. Assessment focuses on:

·       professional development;

·       reflective capacity;

·       quality of collaboration;

·       ethical and context-aware practice;

·       societal relevance of the work.

In the case of an excess number of applications, selection will be based on a motivation letter.