RASL minor is the manifestation of a new educational form across and beyond artistic and academic disciplines offered by the Rotterdam Arts and Sciences Lab (RASL) since 2019. While working in teams of 3-4 people, you develop collaborative undisciplinary ways of working applied to a context outside of the academy and university, using what you have learned so far in your studies and in other learning environments to merge with the knowledges of your fellow students and others. Participating students come from a wide variety of studies such as composition, graphic, audiovisual and spatial design, arts and culture studies, political science, psychology, industrial design, history and philosophy.

We situate the Minor’s mandate to relate and engage with the world beyond disciplinary constraints in a broader societal context of ecological devastation and historically shaped injustices, which demand the imagining and enacting of alternative futures. Each year, we contribute to an existing project or initiative that aims to re-imagine tomorrow in a radical way by re-considering and re-making how we learn about and approach the particular issue at hand.

This year’s RASL Minor engages with the ZOÖP* research framework (focusing on ‘regenerative relationships’**), which, together with the Hillevliet building and its organization, functions as a tangible starting point for the programme. The topics of each research team will be formulated and assembled based on what the group members find urgent during their engagement with the offered framework and context.

Eventually, you and your team are asked to design a learning experience*** – a participatory event, workshop, game, or another format – that results from the team inquiry and challenges traditional modes of learning, knowing, and sharing knowledges. The learning experience addresses the publics as participating actors who relate to the research and urgencies or are specifically invited to engage with those.

The minor is divided into two parts:
PART I (4 Sept - 9 Nov) – 15 EC;
PART II (20 Nov - 8 Feb) – 15 EC.
Students can either participate in Part I or in both parts. It is not possible to only participate in Part II. If you are not obliged to obtain 30 EC for a Minor, you can choose if you would like to join Part II and inform us by the end of October.

Part II of the Minor focuses on individual research trajectories, which can continue the projects developed during Part 1 or take a different direction in the matter of concern and medium relevant to you.

The archive of previous RASL Minor’s editions might be worth visiting.