UCSC Arts & Ecology Festival

Start: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 10:00AM
End: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 10:00PM

On Earth Day, UC Santa Cruz launches the inaugural Arts & Ecology Festival: Creative Resistance, a campus-wide gathering that refuses to treat climate change as a problem of carbon alone. Instead, it brings together artists, scientists, students, and community partners to engage the deeper conditions of the crisis, and to open space for cultural, political, and imaginative transformations grounded in repair, reciprocity, and collective futures. Taking place at the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), the festival unfolds as a full day of exhibitions, film screenings, performances, workshops, talks, and public engagement. Developed through an open call that drew an overwhelming response across disciplines, the program reflects a growing field of practitioners working across environmental research, land-based knowledge, climate resistance, and practices of repair that move beyond dominant institutional and economic frameworks. What: Arts & Ecology Festival: Creative Resistance When: April 22, 2026 — 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM Where: Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), UC Santa Cruz Admission: Free and open to the public