Are you a student looking for a minor that goes beyond traditional lectures? Want to tackle challenges in sustainability, urban design, or art-science collaboration? Join us for an open-door event to discover five transformative minors designed to tackle real-world challenges through art, science, sustainability, and civic engagement. Meet the coordinators, ask questions, and find the perfect fit for your next academic year.
- Date
- Wednesday 22 Apr 2026, 10:00 - 13:00
- Type
- General
- Spoken Language
- English
- Space
- Education Lab
- Ticket information
Free and open doors (no registration required)
Target audience
This event is open to second-year students from all faculties, students required to enroll in a minor for the upcoming academic year, and anyone interested in transdisciplinary learning and real-world impact.
What to expect
- Direct Access: Chat face-to-face with the teachers and coordinators behind each minor.
- Interactive Stands: Explore booths featuring the RASL, Bildung Climate School, Beyond Impact, and Civic Studio teams.
- Live Insights: Get answers to your questions about workload, projects, and career paths.
Participating Minors | Come visit the stands to learn more about:
Focus: Art-science collaboration, challenging disciplinary structures, and situated research.
Contact: Tamara de Groot
The RASL Minor Re-Imagining Tomorrow through Arts and Sciences offers students the opportunity to engage with situated societal concerns in transdisciplinary ways, in collaboration with cultural partners from Rotterdam. By bringing together students and teachers from a wide range of academic and artistic backgrounds, the minor invites students to create and experiment with alternative approaches to knowledge production and research.
Re-imagining tomorrow requires recognizing that disciplinary ways of knowing and doing are not neutral or fixed: they are imaginative structures that create and reinforce specific ways of seeing and shaping the world. This minor challenges students to interrogate those structures and explore how they might be transformed. It emphasizes experimentation, collaboration, and situated research as part of the learning process.
The urgency of the RASL minor is informed by our current predicament – a 'clusterfuck of world-historical proportions' – which demands new forms of research and learning. To re-imagine our collective futures, we must come together in diverse ensembles to explore how we might live and work in more socially and ecologically just ways. The minor invites students to co-create and mobilize such ensembles through a learning by doing approach, engaged transdisciplinary research and imaginative interventions.
In the minor, we focus on how to integrate ways of knowing (such as artistic, academic, experiential, embodied) that are considered incommensurable – not having a common basis, measure or standard of comparison. To do so, you will:
- Try out and explore existing transdisciplinary art-science practices and related theories in Thematic Workshops;
- Learn to create collaborative art-science tools and methods through an experiential learning process in the Cultural Partner Collaborations;
- Gain fundamental skills required for engaging in art-science transdisciplinary collaborations in Transdisciplinary Skills Sessions.
In short, this minor is as much about the how of learning and research as it is about the what of doing art-science transdisciplinarity. Students are encouraged – together with their tutors, peers and cultural partners – to co-develop a transdisciplinary approach that responds to the particularities of their project's context. This is not a pre-scripted path but a collaborative journey.
Focus: Urban transformation, design activism, and New European Bauhaus values.
Contact: Janna Michael
This minor calls on you to take an active role in the city as a site of engagement, transformation and action. The city is not a finished product, it is contested, lived, and constantly in the making. In this minor, you are invited to critically reflect upon and enact a value-based journey to city-making: to imagine, identify and to explore, with approaches to city-making that celebrate the values of sustainability, inclusion, and beauty. You are mentored to take on the role of designer, activist, and researcher, using creativity, theoretical knowledge, embodied and lived experience, and collective action to engage with urgent urban challenges.
This inter-institutional Minor (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Codarts, Willem de Kooning Academy) connects artistic practice and social-scientific education. It is embedded within day-to-day lives and local societal challenges and opportunities in Rotterdam. Guided by transformational city making paradigms, including the New European Bauhaus and its core values of sustainability, inclusion, and beauty, you will use the art and design together with (social) science as tools for questioning, imagining, and intervening.
Focus: Personal agency, practical sustainability skills, collaboration with vocational schools and field work projects with Rotterdam-based companies
Contact: Ginie Servant-Miklos
Do you feel frustrated by the state of the world, but not sure what to do about it? Would you like to gain personal resilience, meet like-minded people, and build solutions with your head, heart and hands, but don't have time or money for a gap year? Would you like work experience in sustainability, but don't know where to start?
If yes, the Bildung Climate School (BCS) is for you! It's the gap year experience, without the gap year. You'll come out with a sense of purpose, agency, community and a toolkit of skills to work towards a more sustainable future. BCS is the first inclusive Minor in the Netherlands that brings MBO (vocational), HBO (applied sciences) and university students together to work with real companies to address sustainability challenges in Rotterdam.
You'll work in five immersive tracks:
1. The Bildung Track: you will develop your personal agency, group resilience and societal engagement through our unique blend of artistic, scientific and practical workshops. You'll get personalized Bildung workshops from some of the best people in their field - successful sustainability entrepreneurs, professional dancers, biodiversity experts, sustainability economists, mindfulness coaches, folk and jazz artists… get inspired, challenge yourself, (re)connect with your body, your heart and your mind, find your purpose as an agent of change. There will be 2 Bildung workshops per week.
2. The Sustainability Track: we're going to need to (re)learn to work with our hands to live more sustainable lives. You'll get hands on experience in practical skills like vegetarian cooking, sewing, repairing, recognizing edible plants in the wild, recycling waste into products etc. in partnership with exciting sustainability ventures in Rotterdam. There will be 1 sustainability workshop per week.
3. The Internship Track: In a group of 4-5 students (mixed across MBO, HBO and university) you will be working 6-8 hours per week with a company that is struggling with a sustainability challenge. You will work 1 day per week on your internship.
4. The Project Track: You'll bring your company's sustainability challenge into the classroom and design a fashion piece and a campaign for them, featured in a live show in Rotterdam. Fashion is one of the least sustainable industries on Earth - by re-using old materials to make wearable art you'll learn sewing, teamwork, project management, experience the joy of creating something real, and tell the world fashion doesn't have to destroy the planet! No sewing experience required; we're partnering with a local fashion school to give you the training you'll need! Don't feel like sewing? There's 4-5 team members per group, including fashion students who can design and sew clothes. You can learn from them while focusing on the campaign, making a movie, a social media plan, etc. It's about tapping into everybody's strengths, building diverse teams and finding what works for you. There will be 2 project work sessions per week.
5. The Reflection Track: with such an immersive program, it's important to take stock of what you've learned. The reflection track will use guided, embodied workshops with techniques like mindfulness, boxing, art and journaling to help you make sense of your journey and define your purpose. There will be 1 reflection session per week.
Focus: Full-semester transdisciplinary teams tackling real societal issues in Rotterdam and Delft.
Contact: Isa Sanchez Cecilia
Work on societal challenges. Not case studies, but co-created intervention for people, and communities.
In this full-semester course, you collaborate in transdisciplinary teams with community organisations, researchers, and professionals in Rotterdam and Delft. You tackle themes like sustainability, urban transitions, and health and wellbeing. Working directly with those involved, not observing from a distance.
You will analyse complex problems across systems and perspectives, go into the field, engage stakeholders, and co-create interventions that are tested against reality. Expect ambiguity, friction, and iteration. You are not given clear answers. You learn how to act when there aren’t any.
This is demanding work. It requires collaboration, ownership, and the ability to navigate complexity. But if you want to move beyond theory and contribute to something tangible, this is where it happens.
Focus: Intensive 10-week self-directed inquiry into societal challenges.
Contact: Daan Tielenburg
Start with a question that matters. Then take it seriously.
In this 10-week track, you design and carry out your own inquiry into a societal challenge (health, sustainability, social justice, digital society). Whatever you choose to engage with.
You work across disciplines, connect with stakeholders, and develop an exploratory intervention or insight grounded in real-world engagement. This is not about following a predefined path. You are expected to shape your own direction, integrate different perspectives, and make your work meaningful beyond academia.
Short, but intense. You will be pushed to think, act, and reflect, personally and professionally.
Frequently Asked Questions
● Do I need to book a spot? No. This is an open-door event. Feel free to drop in anytime between 10:00 and 13:00.
● Can I attend if I am not in my second year? This event is primarily targeted at 2nd-year students and those required to take a minor, but everyone is welcome to browse and learn.
● What should I bring? Just your curiosity. If you have a specific schedule or questions about your study program, bring a notebook.
● Is the event in English or Dutch? The event is open to all faculties, so please expect a mix of languages. Most coordinators speak English, but checking with the specific stand is recommended.
● Location: Erasmus Education Lab, ground floor of Polak Building (Campus Woudestein).
- More information
Date: Wednesday 22 April 2026
Time: 10:00 - 13:00 (walk-in anytime)
Location: Erasmus Education Lab - Campus Woudestein
Entrance: free (including light snacks and refreshments)- Related links
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