The Digital Arts and New Media program at UCSC has issued its call for applicants for the 07-08 term. I thought I would point out some of the participatory culture project groups. People interested in a MFA graduate program and participatory culture should take a look Over the next two years two project groups will take place under the Participatory Culture focus area in the DANM program. One focusing on tools for media activists and the other focusing on technologies for civil society & democracy.

Professor Sharon Daniel’s project group for the 07-08 term is titled “Digital Inclusion”: Creating tools for citizen media activists. The group will focus on adapting technologies for “self-representation” in marginalized communities. She mentions the palabrastranquilas project which we worked on in the Summer of 04.

Professor Warren Sack’s participatory culture project group for the 08-09 term is titled Public Media: New Forms of Democratic Participation. This group will explore Democratic Participation in the context of participatory culture via invention and experimentation. I recommend reading the proposal (here is a snippet)

Free, participatory culture is a bubbling, productive realm of invention and discovery, but its biggest successes have largely been in the construction and distribution of open source software alternatives (e.g., Linux) to commercial products. Can participatory (i.e., non-broadcast), public media be invented that inspire and facilitate new forms of democratic participation and the reinvigoration of civic society?