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Fall 2020 Update:

Due to the recent decision not to open resident halls on campus, Foundation will move all hybrid sections to remote delivery for the fall. All Foundation students have been scheduled into learning cohorts for the year. These cohorts of 12-15 students will take all three of their Foundation courses together each semester, forming a strong community whose members will get to know each other well. Equally important, these tight cohorts will be taught by faculty teams who will work together to ensure that students achieve both the outcomes of each individual course and have a chance to make connections between courses, thus creating an expansive and interdisciplinary learning experience. Additionally faculty will be able to offer students in the cohort they are teaching a high degree of individual attention, in the form of critiques, one-on-one meetings, and small group work.

Last spring, when the pandemic began and our courses had to move quickly from in-person to remote delivery, our faculty responded to the transition with support, empathy, and excitement for stepping into a new world. This was a new paradigm for learning and we all embraced it, working collaboratively and seizing the opportunity to look at Foundation from a fresh perspective. We are now ready to walk confidently into this new year with you, engaging in both digital and analogue technologies, embracing collaboration, empathy and openness in the classroom like never before. We are thrilled to welcome you to Pratt, and look forward to working with you.

Pratt Foundation is a yearlong experience that transforms incoming students into a connected community of aspiring artists, designers, creative makers, and thinkers.

As the gateway to Pratt for many students, Foundation serves a critical role of introducing core concepts of the creative practice while building community habits and relationships that will endure well beyond the first-year experience. Resembling today’s reality for makers and visual thinkers, Pratt Foundation encourages students to work collaboratively, pooling abilities, ideas, and talents to synthesize technology and tradition into innovative, creative outcomes.

The Pratt Foundation classroom has been designed as a laboratory that facilitates exploration and inquiry. Students develop analog and digital skills through a series of independently driven projects in their studio-based classes. Projects are structured yet open-ended and allow for self-discovery. Through successes and missteps, students learn to innovate solutions and recognize what it takes to be a successful artist or designer.

Student and professor in classroom