March 31, 2023

When it opens in 2024, the new 4,000 square foot Social Documentation Lab will supply a new, state-of-the-artwork, resourceful property for graduate pupils in the Department of Film and Electronic Media’s SocDoc MFA and PhD applications. 

UC Santa Cruz’s Division of the Arts will shortly commence development of a planet-course manufacturing and write-up-production facility in support of its Social Documentation (SocDoc) MFA method. When it opens in 2024, the new 4,000 square foot Social Documentation Lab will present a new, point out-of-the-art, inventive dwelling for graduate college students in the Section of Film and Digital Media’s SocDoc MFA and PhD plans. 

The two-year SocDoc diploma is the UC system’s only MFA program developed for media makers committed to checking out the expressive, connective, and disruptive possible of socially engaged documentary manufacturing. The SocDoc MFA, now in its 15th year, emphasizes ethical methods and group involvement and accountability – highlighting underserved voices and urgent challenges as a result of socially engaged documentary methods in movie, audio, images, and/or website-primarily based and interactive platforms. Alumni have absent on to create professions as award-successful filmmakers, producers, academics, archivists, and curators.

The new SocDoc Lab in the Westside Analysis Park will function open up parts for collaboration a studio/gallery for immersive media and installations a seminar home an audio mixing room a state-of-the-artwork audio recording studio editing and operate stations and an enclosed tranquil enhancing and color grading room.

“We’re so very pleased of our graduate learners and alumni who have been carrying out groundbreaking visual and sound-dependent get the job done even whilst lacking authentic lab space to establish and nurture their jobs,” suggests Peter Limbrick, Professor and Chair of Film and Electronic Media. “The Social Documentation Lab will quickly provide an surroundings where by both of those MFA and PhD students can carry on to produce their artistic dedication to social justice, using the most effective instruments achievable in an expansive place that lets for experimentation and strategies to prosper.”  

Considering the fact that 2019, the job has been led by Professor of Movie and Electronic Media and Director of Graduate Scientific studies for SocDoc Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, with the potent aid of Dean of the Arts Celine Parreñas Shimizu and prior Interim Dean Ted Warburton. In 2022, the SocDoc and Arts Division group completed a collaborative style and organizing system with Gensler Architects.

“The Arts Division is fired up for the SocDoc Lab to be in proximity to the Environmental Art and Social Practice MFA spaces as well as Science and Engineering Labs in the Westside Exploration Park. This cross-disciplinary area is portion of a larger sized college tradition of collaboration throughout the disciplines,” claims Parreñas Shimizu. “This new room will provide very important assist for this critical program that is composed of the most stunning range, supplying our present college students and these that arrive soon after them prospects that empower their rise to the highest ranges of creativeness and social impact.”

Professor Taylor as School Director of the Social Documentation Lab, doing the job closely with Arts Assistant Dean Stephanie Moore and UCSC employees architect Andrea Hilderman, will aid lead the upcoming phases of operate in the generation and realization of the new house. The group has put a major emphasis on universal design and obtain all over the setting up and design method.

“We have designed a house system that will enable us to make the lab obtainable and welcoming for wide and varied local community engagement, whilst also making a variety of get the job done areas and experiences for Film and Electronic Media graduate learners,” says Taylor. “We are constructing on the eyesight of producing a world-course facility that will provide stakeholders and companions in the Santa Cruz local community as well as our various learners and the much larger field of impartial documentary media makers. The SocDoc Lab will be the web-site for co-creation and mastering not only all through the academic 12 months, but also for probable summer season labs and convenings in partnership with unbiased documentary companies and alliances with whom our college and learners on a regular basis collaborate.”

Funding for this venture was made possible by personal donations.