• Jazz at Lunch! The Art of Spontaneous Creativity

    Porter/Kresge Dining Hall 411 Porter-Kresge Rd, Santa Cruz, CA

    Take a break from studying for finals and grab lunch in the Porter/Kresge Dining Hall and enjoy the Jazz. Grab a snack from the Porter Market and take in the concert from the Mezzanine.  Or purchase lunch at the dining hall and enjoy the performance from the Dinning room floor. Porter/Kresge Dining Hall Wednesday, March […]

    Free
  • A Sacred Witnessing: A Trans Day of Euphoria Event

    Diversity Center 1117 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz, CA, United States

    Join the Cantu Queer Center and the Diversity Center for an intergenerational Trans Day of Visibility gathering rooted in euphoria, joy, and sacred witnessing. Trans, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, and gender-expansive people of all ages are invited to share their stories, create art, and witness each other’s full humanity in a moment of dangerous hypervisibility and harm […]

  • Student Recital—Maddison Ramirez, soprano

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Maddison Ramirez, soprano, presents their Bachelor of Music (B.M.) recital, with music from Renaissance, Romantic, and Modern eras. Accompanied by Luke Shepherd, piano; Faith Lanam, harpsichord, Denali Zia, cello, and various additional vocalists. Download and share the event flyer here. — ADMISSION – Attend in person at the Music Center Recital Hall at UC Santa […]

    FREE and open to the public
  • NOIZ: An Evening of Words, Sounds + Ideas

    Digital Arts Research Center 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA

    Hosted by Assistant Professor and hip hop artist akua naru, the evening features live student performances, a DJ set, and an intimate conversation with guest artist/performer Edd Wheeler: pioneering Brazilian rapper, founding member of As Damas do Rap, the first female Hip Hop group in Rio de Janeiro, and practicing lawyer and organizer whose life […]

    FREE and open to UCSC affiliates
  • Night of Ideas 2026

    Institute of the Arts and Sciences 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States

    Enlightenment, Now! Join us for a nocturnal celebration of art, philosophy, and activism! Enlightenment, Now! As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, the 2026 Santa Cruz […]

  • Field Trip to ALBA

    MJ Organic Farms 1700 Old Stage Rd, Salinas, California

    Join us for an opportunity to visit the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) in Salinas! ALBA is a non-profit whose mission is to create economic opportunity for aspiring organic farmers and ag professionals — many of whom are local field workers and first-generation college students — through land-based education in the heart of the Salinas Valley. […]

  • Arts & Ecology Festival: Creative Resistance

    Digital Arts Research Center 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA

    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. […]

  • Harriet: Performing Anarchive

    Through motion capture, immersive sound, and real-time digital systems, CHARI (Dr. Chari Smith) performs alongside Harriet, a life-scale avatar carrying a living archive of Black sonic and vernacular memory. Drawing from Black archival traditions rooted in call-and-response, improvisation, and communal stewardship, the performance understands memory as relational and alive. Together, our movements shape the environment […]

    Free
  • Harriet: Performing an Archive

    Digital Arts Research Center 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA

    Through motion capture, immersive sound, and real-time digital systems, CHARI perform alongside Harriet, a life-scale avatar carrying a living archive of Black sonic and vernacular memory. Drawing from Black archival traditions rooted in call-and-response, improvisation, and communal stewardship, the performance understands memory as relational and alive. Together, our movements shape the environment as the performance […]

    FREE; Registration Required
  • Pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi—April in Santa Cruz

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi graces UC Santa Cruz’s Music Center Recital Hall with Rippling, Resistance, and Rain, a unique concert of 21st century piano music written by composers from Japan and the United States. The program opens with an imaginative fantasy of a bird, explores the psychology of addiction and mental illness, explores a liberating sense […]

    FREE and open to the public
  • Denim Day Open Mic & Survivor Share-Out

    Namaste Lounge 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Join CARE in closing out Sexual Assault Awareness Month 2026, during Denim Day, for a space where we’ll connect as a community, hand out copies of the new volume of the CARE Art Zine, and hold an open mic and survivor share-out, open to all UCSC survivors, their supporters, and allies! Food and refreshments provided, […]

  • Percussionist Christopher Clarino—April in Santa Cruz

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Join percussionist Christopher Clarino in a concert of revolutionary work that invites listeners of all kinds to rethink hearing itself. This concert features a wide range of pieces—some well known and others newly commissioned—that explore sound, language, and gesture through electronics, field recordings, text, and American Sign Language (ASL). Framed in dialogue with these premieres […]

    FREE and open to the public
  • UCSC Orchestra

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    UCSC Orchestra

    Free – $12
  • Music on the Meadow—April in Santa Cruz

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Music On The Meadow (MOTM) presents “Episode 0: Music with the Meadow.” MOTM showcases engagement from students, artists, scientists, scholars, and culture bearers, who engage in “listening with the meadow” through genre-defying works. MOTM is a site for low-key (but not low-quality or low-impact) celebration, gathering, mourning, remembering, rethinking, unlearning. This event is presented as […]

    FREE and open to the public
  • UCSC Wind Ensemble

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    UCSC Wind Ensemble concert

    Free – $12