Community Art can be loosely defined as a way of creating art in which professional artists collaborate more or less intensively with people who do not normally actively engage in the arts. The basis for this practice is a carefully constructed and maintained reciprocal relationship between artists and non-artists, from which original, innovative and socially relevant art emerges. Community Art involves all art disciplines and can be found in all corners of the world: in immigrant working-class areas, in prisons, in rural communities, in (former) war zones, etc. Also in the Netherlands it is a rapidly expanding field that operates mostly (but not exclusively) outside the mainstream or avant-garde. Because it challenges traditional notions of (autonomous) art making, community art reconfigures existing art theory and criticism in an attempt to validate it both in cultural and in social terms. The course familiarizes students with a great variety of practical examples from around the world and the most recent scholarly insights on community art, In the second half of the course, students will become part of an international research team that will conduct field work in ongoing community art projects in Utrecht or elsewhere in the Netherlands. This course is an advanced module in the Creative Cities Minor and provides the student with hands-on experience in the daily reality of community arts projects.