UC Santa Cruz's arts division, one conversation at a time.
Most episodes are introduced by Maureen Dixon Harrison of the arts division's communications office, and each title pairs 'The Art of Change' with a guest's name. The conversations cover a department that brought games and theater under one roof, a filmmaker and archivist's urban history events, a campus theater troupe, and a class that examines wrongful convictions.
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UC Santa Cruz (Audio) is the feed for 'The Art of Change', an interview series presented by UCTV and rooted in the university's arts division. The titles are plain: the series name, a colon, a guest. Maureen Dixon Harrison hosts most of the episodes here and introduces herself as the division's assistant director of communications and marketing. The frame is institutional. Episodes open with UCTV credits and some close with a pointer to the division's website, but the conversations go well past news and events. Michael Chemers, chair of the Department of Performance, Play, and Design, explains why games sit comfortably beside theater and dance: all of them reveal their stories through action. He describes faculty who were already collaborating before the department existed and admits the process has had its hiccups. He also argues that a room of differing views beats one where everyone says the same thing. Rick Prelinger, a film and digital media professor and founder of the Prelinger Archives and Prelinger Library in San Francisco, lights up talking about urban history events where audiences yell corrections at him and at each other. He also describes his approach to DEI as department chair and credits what he learned from colleagues of color and LGBTQ+ colleagues. Drama lecturer Don Williams founded the African American Theater Arts Troupe on campus in 1991. His episode is about belonging. Students write reflection papers after each production, and people on campus recognize them from shows, sometimes offering a ride in the rain. Sharon Daniel, a media artist who makes interactive and participatory documentaries, brings the heaviest subject matter. She talks about a class and project that review criminal cases for flaws that could support post-conviction hearings or clemency petitions, and she discusses racial bias in jury selection, citing a case with no Black juror at all. Celine Parreñas Shimizu, the Dean of the Arts, describes a career in both film scholarship and filmmaking, focused on race, sexuality and representation. She moves past the positive-versus-negative image framework to ask why viewers are drawn to images that subjugate them. Isabel Dees's conversation is personal rather than administrative: she recalls early schooling in Mexico that showed her there is more than one way to learn. She also describes the quiet costs of college without a laptop or smartphone, or while sharing one room with three others who all have class at the same time. Some closings thank the audience for viewing, which suggests these conversations also exist as video. The payoff is hearing artists, educators and a dean explain in their own words what one university's arts division is trying to change.
Made for: Suits a listener curious about how a university arts division works from the inside, including how departments are built, how art is taught and how it deals with race and representation, who likes hearing artists and educators explain their own work.
What sets it apart: It stays anchored in one campus arts division, so the conversations deal with specific programs and people: a department that pairs theater with games, a troupe founded in 1991, and a class focused on wrongful convictions. The warm, institutional frame still makes room for pointed talk about racial bias and belonging.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Don Williams frames theater as everyday campus support, helping students feel recognized, connected, and seen.
Theater comes through as a practical form of campus care: a place where students can recognize themselves, try out belonging, and find community.
A reflective episode on creative learning, community, and the everyday cost of performing belonging.
The episode links a childhood divided between Southern California and Mexico with a larger idea: learning can take more than one shape. Time in school in Mexico becomes a way into questions of culture, identity, and art, with dance, literature, and storytelling treated as…
A dean's personal and scholarly case for art as a way to understand complexity and sustain everyday life.
Art becomes a way of knowing in this first Art of Change video podcast conversation with Celine, Dean of the Arts at UC Santa Cruz. She follows a life shaped by movement, from a large family in Manila to high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then on to California and the UC…
Carlton Hester connects arts leadership, diversity, and belonging through a vision of social and natural interdependence.
The Art of Change follows Carlton Hester as he discusses his role as the first associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts at UC Santa Cruz.
A banking-focused talk about technology, management, and the decisions waiting beyond the branch.
This single-episode review follows a management talk about the pressures reshaping banking, from remote customers and shorter branch hours to changing real estate needs, branch consolidation, face-identifying ATM technology, and predictive modeling based on customer habits.
Literary audio with a writer’s ear.
Lecture guests, offstage stories, meaningful songs.
Héctor and Beto dissect Mexican grammar, slang, and news in native-speed Spanish conversations.
Small habit changes meet hands-on AI experiments.
UC Santa Cruz drama lecturer Don Williams describes founding the African American Theater Arts Troupe in 1991 and Rainbow Theater in 1993.
Isabel Dees ties UC Santa Cruz to a childhood split between the San Fernando Valley and Mexico, saying bilingual and immigrant experience taught her there is more than one way to learn.
Celine Perreñas-Shimizu, Dean of the Arts at UC Santa Cruz, traces a path from Manila to Cambridge, Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, and leadership in the UC system while arguing that higher education can "make us free." She describes working a 5 a.m.
["Carlton Hester says DEI only counts when it is visible \"when you enter an environment,\" not when institutions rely on lip service.", "On UC Santa Cruz's Art of Change podcast, host Maureen Dixon-Harrison interviews Hester, the professor of music and the first associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts.", "He argues that music, dance, visual arts, spoken word, film, and digital arts can \"save the planet\" by crossing language barriers.", "Hester points to Cornell festivals, the Global African Music Festival Series, Charles Tolliver at Africa Brass, Black History Month, and the 1966 Texas Western championship as examples of how the \"full story\" still matters."]
Daryl Brown uses 37 years in banking to argue that ATMs, online banking, bill pay, and debit cards have already moved customers outside the old branch model.
Dan Roem, a UC Santa Cruz alumnus with degrees in fine arts and biology, argues that pictures can clarify complex problems and that arts education develops an unusual problem-solving method.
Sheldon Epps recounts a career as an actor, director, and artistic director, beginning with a Pasadena Playhouse performance of Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding.
Scott Summitt, an industrial designer who worked for Apple, Nike, Palm, and Silicon Graphics, explains how 3D scanning and printing reshape prosthetic design.
UC Santa Cruz's documentary Dos Americas examines how Hurricane Katrina changed New Orleans through the arrival of approximately 100,000 to 150,000 Latino residents and workers.
At UC Santa Cruz's 2008 Distinguished Social Sciences Alumni Award event, Joe Burney connects his education career to a childhood diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes and a stated 0% chance of reaching his early 30s.
Julianna Spahr examines English-language literature from the late 1980s through the turn of the 21st century, arguing that writers such as Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Hunani-Kay Trask, Charles Bernstein, and Nurbese Philip disrupted standard English to address unequal language capital.
UC Santa Cruz's lecture argues that dreams show an "awesome lawfulness" across development, adulthood, cultures, gender patterns, and waking concerns.
Jonathan Moreno, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, examines how neuroscience intersects with ethics, politics, history, and national defense.
Jonathan Moreno, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, examines military and government-sponsored human experiments from Walter Reed's 1900 yellow-fever study through Cold War radiation and chemical research.
James Young, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor and former UC Santa Cruz student, explains how Holocaust memorials shaped Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Berlin's national memorial.
In “The Prison: A Sign of Democracy?”, Angela Davis examines why imprisonment became attached to U.S.
Bettina Aptheker explains how Intimate Politics uses Sonia Sanchez's poetry, movement history, and memoir to connect personal trauma with political power.
At UC Santa Cruz's 2007 Distinguished Social Sciences Alumni Award ceremony, Judge Kelvin D.
Professor David Tal examines how Israel sought a U.S.
Murray Baumgarten introduces Michael Shapiro’s University of Illinois lecture on how Victorian burlesques connected Shakespeare’s Shylock with Dickens’s Fagin and the Jewish old-clothes-man stereotype.
A poetic meditation on music, sentience, and transformation, referencing jazz musicians.