The Nomad MFA has offered progressive, field-based graduate study in the Americas since 2016. Now, the program is offering a restructured residency schedule, designed to better serve working artists. Starting with cohort five in 2020, the program will include two field-based residencies per year, spread across six residency sites per cohort. This change streamlines the curriculum, and makes the program more convenient for working adults, with a three-week June residency and a two-week January residency. The change also makes the program more affordable by reducing travel costs. With these changes, the Nomad MFA continues to function as an adaptive program, whose curriculum is becoming ever more sustainable and responsive.
Residency sites include US locations in Hartford, CT; Minneapolis, MN; rural New Mexico; Oakland, CA; the Hudson Valley in upstate New York; Brooklyn and Harlem in NYC; and Miami, FL, as well as international sites in Oaxaca, MX and Coatepeque, SV. Through deeply established, reciprocal relationships with the cultural communities at each residency site, the Nomad MFA provides a pedagogy of place, ethical culture and ecological connection.
Virtual studio visits are conducted between residencies, connecting the graduate students with each other, and the faculty. In addition, students meet with their thesis advisors every three weeks via distance learning platforms during the fall and spring semesters. The Nomad MFA’s expanded curriculum includes courses rarely found in an MFA, such as “River Lab”; “Art and Place, Reconsidered”; and the “Techno Lab” series. Each cohort has the opportunity to contribute to two projects by contemporary artists and cultural producers through the “Distinguished Practitioner” courses.
As the leader in alternative pedagogy in the arts, the Nomad MFA is based at the University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School and is dedicated to Regenerative Culture. Learn more at www.nomadmfa.org, and follow on Instagram for field-based residency coverage. Application deadline for scholarship consideration of cohort 5 is January 15, 2020.
