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Alternative Art School Fair

The Alternative Art School Fair presents an introduction to alternative art schools from around the US and the world.

Art education is a reflection of social and cultural evolution; it engages with structures of meaning-making and considers different frameworks for experience. The impetus to create an alternative art school is rooted not only in a desire to create “better” art, but to create the conditions for greater freedom of expression. Often run as free, artist-run initiatives, the values and visions of alternative art schools vary widely in methodology, mission and governance. But even when they are relatively small in scale they provide vital models of cultural critique and experimentation.

The Alternative Art School Fair event, including workshops, discussions, and keynote presentations by Carol Becker, Luis Camnitzer, Craig Wilkins and Dorothea Rockburne, will be streamed live and archived by Clocktower Productions on clocktower.org.

The Alternative Art School Fair recognizes that the act of school building is an effort to create institutional structures that are more responsive to cultural evolution. With this in mind the Fair invites the public to engage with these schools at interactive booths alongside a weekend program of presentations and discussions that examine the role of such alternatives.

The reasons for this fair are several:

  • To provide better visibility for alternative schools and improve access to their programming.
  • To create opportunities for schools to share experiences and resources for mutual enrichment.
  • To consider the role of the artist as cultural producer.
  • To discuss the evolving methodology of arts education.
  • To demystify the process of creating a school.

Criteria for participation:

  • Calls itself a school.
  • Engages arts or creative practice education within their programming.
  • Proposes something unique in terms of methodology, organization, mission, curriculum, final output.
  • If the school does not call itself an art school, it should propose something that can impact or transform arts education.
  • Is a space that generates alternative systems and new cultural models.

Participating Schools:

  • AAPG – Alternative Art Program Guatemala
  • AltMFA
  • Anhoek School
  • Archeworks
  • Arts Letters & Numbers
  • ASCII Project
  • Beta-Local
  • Black Mountain School
  • Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
  • Center for Art Analysis
  • COLLABOR
  • Ă©cole de Hogbonu
  • Enroll Yourself
  • Free School of Architecture
  • Islington Mill Art Academy
  • Grizedale Arts
  • Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists' Residency
  • NERTM - New Earth Resiliency Training Module
  • Nomad/9
  • Pioneer Works
  • School of Apocalypse
  • School of Critical Engagement - SoCE
  • School of the Future
  • School for Poetic Computation
  • SOMA
  • Sommerskolen
  • Spring Sessions
  • Sunview Luncheonette
  • The Art & Law Program
  • The Black School
  • The Other MA - TOMA
  • The Public School
  • The School of Making Thinking
  • The Southland Institute
  • The Ventriloquist Summerschool
  • The Zz School of Print Media
  • Thinker Space
  • Transart Institute
  • Uncertainty School
  • UNIDEE - University of Ideas
  • Utopia School

Presses, Libraries, Resources:

  • Arthur Fournier Fine and Rare
  • Booklyn
  • Brooklyn Art Library
  • Common Field
  • Inventory Press
  • OSSAI - Open Source and Space Administration Institute for Alternative Research
  • Provisions Library
  • Sketchbook Project
  • Zone Books