Performance as a vehicle for social change

In the master's programme in Performance Practices, you will explore and broaden your understanding of how performance can be a vehicle for social change. Building on your own experiences, you draw on insights from multiple fields to shape and apply theory and practice through methods such as studio experimentation and practice-as-research.

ArtEZ’s master’s programme in Performance Practices contributes to the de-disciplining of the performing arts field by dissolving the boundaries between different disciplines.

As a student, you will broaden your horizons by working with fellow students from other disciplines and gaining insight into different areas of expertise. By adopting new perspectives, you learn to recognise the qualities, possibilities, and limitations of different disciplines — and to integrate them. The Master of Performance Practices combines the performing arts, dance, social sciences, political science, psychoanalysis and philosophy.

ArtEZ’s master’s programme in Performance Practices contributes to the de-disciplining of the performing arts field by dissolving the boundaries between different disciplines.

As a student, you will broaden your horizons by working with fellow students from other disciplines and gaining insight into different areas of expertise. By adopting new perspectives, you learn to recognise the qualities, possibilities, and limitations of different disciplines and to integrate them. The Master of Performance Practices combines the performing arts, dance, social sciences, political science, psychoanalysis and philosophy.

We aim to transcend the traditional binary model of theory versus practice by embracing and promoting diversity in artistic research. We see research as a process involving a dynamic relationship between different practices. For us, artistic processes, practice documentation and critical positioning in educational and artistic institutions are resources for embodied and intellectual research. These resources can challenge, revitalise and surpass traditional methods of artistic production and education. Ultimately, this will allow us to explore new and potential futures.

The HOME OF PERFORMANCE PRACTICES views performance as a critical and transformative practice aimed at fostering equality and resilience within society.

The programme promotes an undisciplined and diverse approach to thinking and making, encouraging artists to challenge established frameworks and to create new forms of knowledge and collaboration. The studio serves as a space for research, experimentation, and creation — a place where theory, practice, and reflection converge.

Students are regarded as artist-researchers: independent makers who explore and develop their own practice while actively contributing to a pluralistic learning environment. Performance is conceived as a place where social structures can be revealed and transformed — in relation to ecology, politics, and social justice.

The master’s programme in Performance Practices trains you to become a performance artist who acts critically, collaboratively, and resiliently within a complex world, shaping new ways of thinking, creating, and living together through practice.

Interested in the experiences of other students? Take a look at this video, in which alumna Andrea van der Kuil talks about her experience and graduation research.