Duke Arts is committed to engaging our communities at Duke, in Durham and beyond by connecting you with professional artists from around the globe.
Duke Arts Presents builds upon Duke Performances’ long history of partnerships with a range of campus and community organizations to create artist engagement events throughout our season. These engagement events bring the world’s leading artists to Duke classrooms, local K-12 schools and public forums in ways that directly enrich the life of our vibrant, inclusive city and community.
At Duke Arts, we believe that engagement with creators and performers builds space for learning and inquiry, facilitating collisions between ideas, forging connections and animating course material.
When selecting our season performances for Duke Arts Presents, we partner closely with the arts departments at Trinity College of Arts & Sciences to engage artists who will be most relevant to the academic work taking place at Duke. We then partner with faculty across the arts, humanities, social sciences and STEM fields to reach students through class visits, performances and other engagements.
We invite students and faculty to reach out directly to our staff about ways to integrate our visiting artists into your classroom, student group or independent studies.
Duke Arts belongs to a network of arts presenters across Durham that partner with Durham Public Schools to support and enrich the district’s emphasis on top-notch arts education within and beyond the classroom. We work closely with educators across disciplines to match the expertise of our visiting artists to curricular foci, and regularly bring artists to K-12 classrooms via in-person and virtual visits.
We believe strongly in the importance of meeting students where they are: in their studies, in their classrooms. Equally, our engagement work supports opportunities to introduce K-12 students to the University as an open, welcoming space for creative study, research and arts exposure. Each season, Duke Arts works with Durham Public Schools to host students and educators on-campus for matinee performances, master classes and workshops with our visiting artists.We invite K-12 educators and students to reach out directly to our staff about ways to become involved.
Fundamental to Duke Arts’ artistic engagement work is the understanding that Duke University is one interconnected part of Durham’s diverse, energetic and ever-evolving cultural community. We prioritize collaboration with local artistic and cultural workers, independent artists and venues, and members of the general public to facilitate creative encounters beyond the stage or gallery that are attentive to the expertise and interests of Durham-based constituencies.
Our always-expanding repertoire includes public conversations, master classes and workshops, lecture-demonstrations, pop-up performances and more.
We invite audiences and community members to reach out directly to our staff about ways to become involved.
Delve into the diverse and varying traditions of Día de los Muertos with this panel conversation in which campus and community members explore their own memories and holiday traditions.
This class introduces the traditions of Dia de Muertos. We will construct an ofrenda and learn how to produce paper cempaxochitl (marigolds) and papel picado (cut paper).
In this opening public event of the 2024-25 Keohane Professorship, interdisciplinary artist and scholar Ashon Crawley will present on the relation of dirt and soil to the making of Black life, and how degrading the earth is part of the attempt to unmake Black possibility.
We will introduce Butoh materials and use these as the basis to fully develop our imagination. In the imaginative session, we use the body as a vessel to communicate and transmit information, allowing for autonomy and improvisation in each exercise.
Join visual teaching artist, Gowri Savoor, for a fun and unique workshop to learn how to make a magical star-shaped lantern using bamboo, paper, and LED lights.
Join Gowri Savoor for a magical lantern festival, celebrating seeds and light. Participants can bring lanterns and join the parade. Hot apple cider will be served around a bonfire afterwards.