At the start of this academic year, I shared with our new faculty and students: learning through making is at the heart of what we do at Pratt.
Our creative processes are deeply embodied, critically engaged, and boldly experimental, whether we are deepening our skills in traditional methods, generating new technologies or venturing into new ways of creating with them, or exploring at the intersection of the hand and the digital. This issue of Prattfolio is a reflection on that creative continuum, alive in the work happening today in our shops and labs, studios and classrooms, in the field, and in the innovative and masterful practices of our alumni around the world.
This year, Pratt is focusing on the power of a creative education in a rapidly shifting world. Amid the complex conditions that surround our work, of technological change, escalating crises, and divisive pressures, while the value of higher education is being called into question, at Pratt we are making space for perspective-broadening dialogue and creating ways to move forward as a collective.
This is happening in part through our Pratt Presents events series, which is looking in particular at creative enterprise as AI infuses our lives and industries. Through panel discussions and other programming, the series considers how artists, designers, and creative professionals are uniquely positioned to engage with new technologies through critical, ethical, and innovative lenses.
In mid-November, Pratt hosted our fellow Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) member schools at the 2025 AICAD Symposium “Engaging Values.” With our colleagues in art and design education, we examined how we are preparing the next generation of creative professionals to be contributors and leaders of influence in our dynamic world—whether they are shaping the built environment, devising systems and products that enhance our lives, or giving life to worlds in their art that connect us to our shared human experience.
As we move into the implementation of our next strategic plan, Pratt aims to be the standard setter among creative institutions, in imagination, innovation, sustainability, accessibility, and community. Following a yearlong, community-engaged process of development, the strategic plan was approved this fall, looking to the future of innovative education, including enhanced learning pathways, redesigned spaces and systems, and strengthened community partnerships.
Embedded in all of this is Pratt’s dedication to education that empowers our students to be independent and critical thinkers well equipped to adapt to the changing modes and challenges of the world, teaching them how to think, not what to think. Our students go into the world to do and create meaningful work, among an extraordinary community of alumni who continuously exemplify the transformational power of making. However you are connected with Pratt, I hope you see your vital part in this network, past, present, and future.
—President Frances Bronet