UMD has partnered with the Big Ten Conference schools to create a new playwriting and performance initiative. Known as the Big Ten Theatre Consortium, the group is commissioning a series of plays by outstanding American female playwrights. The purpose of the initiative is to promote the writing and production of new works about women by professional and academic theatres around the country.

The program's third commissioned work, Twilight Bowl, is written by Rebecca Gilman. 

Pulse and Bloom is an interactive and social art installation that visualizes participants’ heartbeats and invites people to share and sync their human heartbeats in a rhythmic pattern. When a participant places their hand upon the pulse sensor, the stem and the flower in the sky start to beat with their heart. When more than one person places a hand upon the pulse sensor, the stem starts to pulse with both participants’ heartbeats, making it possible to watch how heart rates of different people in intimate spaces start to beat in sync, much like fireflies flashing in patterns.

Communities of color have long experienced the effects of figurative black holes. From brain drain to microeconomic depression, communities have faced the realities of intensely powerful gravitational fields. Created by D.C.-based artist Charles Jean-Pierre, Black (w)Holes reverses this dynamic: a figurative portal to an alternative meditative reality. It illustrates how black holes cannot only shift reality, but shift modes of thinking and functioning within the material world in ways that affirm community and imagine more sustainable futures.