Next Now: Studio Art Foundations

Following up on the 2025 FATE Conference, this session targets how we will challenge the established structures and assumptions that form our current understanding of what a foundational education in the arts is supposed to be. What tools have we developed teaching in a pandemic and “post” pandemic environment to better serve how students learn NOW? How might we project reimagined structures into the future to better build the NEXT supportive, inquisitive, and inclusive educational environments?

Artists and Educators are already doing amazing work to challenge traditional/status quo thinking of Foundations. We can learn from these contemporary moments of transformation to effect wider change. What are we doing NOW that shifts, extends, and bends what it means to engage new art students in contemporary making, doing, and thinking? The NEXT NOW is an attempt to conjure, in the present, the tools our students will need to build sustainable practices in their rapidly changing worlds.