The College of Arts of the University of Coimbra and the platform UmbigoLAB start a collaboration program in the development of activities in partnership with the Master in Curatorial Studies, included in the Off-Campus Seminar which intends to expand research in art beyond the academic space.This program will allow students to get involved in a specialized community of agents, establishing a symbiotic relationship between artistic, curatorial and investigative practice, expanding the formative context and making it intertwine with an innovative project of contemporary reflection.The College of Arts is an organic unit of the University of Coimbra deeply committed in bringing contemporary art and contemporary art practices into the core of advanced academic studies; its arts-based research is multifaceted and interdisciplinary exploring and developing common ground with space-time practices such as architecture, cinema, curatorial practices and performing arts. The College of Arts positions itself in the crossroads of scientific qualitative conceptualization and the non-verbal empirical research for knowledge and meaning with in art making and art reception. It looks at the present and the future of artistic practices with an informed and investigative knowledge of the its recent history, and the theoretical and critical reflection that they sparked. The College of Arts is an institution that fully operates in the field of theoretical and empirical knowledge on art practices, and where qualitative arts-based research, creative practices, have actively contributed to the development of innovative teaching procedures. The Curatorial Laboratory, assigned to the Master in Curatorial Studies of the Colégio das Artes, is an essay space for curatorial practice in a formative context. With experimentation and questioning as its first premises, it operates according to methodological dynamics of action and participation. It is designed to developed projects that investigate and explore the concept of situ-action, in which the direct contact of the various agents enhances a collaborative and collective process. Together, guest artists, students, teachers and various communities, rehearse active pedagogies based on the dynamic problem-oriented project-based learning, while expanding the understanding of the exhibition space and the classroom itself. From the intersection of both, the Laboratory is born and from this emerges a contact zone, a hybrid territory that is built in the interstice between artistic and curatorial practices and education. In addition to theoretical training, students find in the Laboratory a possibility of testing, problem solving and implementing projects that articulate various knowledge and languages. The program will be coordinated by the artist, curator and teacher Ana Rito.

  The College of Arts is an organic unit of the University of Coimbra deeply committed in bringing contemporary art and contemporary art practices into the core of advanced academic studies; its arts-based research is multifaceted and interdisciplinary exploring and developing common ground with space-time practices such as architecture, cinema, curatorial practices and performing arts. The College of Arts positions itself in the crossroads of scientific qualitative conceptualization and the non-verbal empirical research for knowledge and meaning with in art making and art reception.