The Salons provided a space to share information and discuss possibilities related to interdisciplinary study at Pratt across the curriculum, co-curriculum, and beyond. Fuse Salons ranged in scale from small gatherings to town-hall style meetings, and took place in a host of locations—from studios to the student union to Zoom. We also held salons with faculty, staff, and students, and our orientation sessions were, in effect, places for salon-like explorations.
The Think T(h)anks were an extension of the salons and provided a space for conversation and free-wheeling imagining of possibilities. Faculty and staff had an opportunity to share their challenges, along with strategies and approaches that provided solutions. In addition, they proved to be gatherings where we could collectively think through possible programmatic and structural visionings that could better serve constituents of the Pratt community, as well as provide more learning pathways for interdisciplinary exploration and action.
The major merit of the salons and think t(h)anks turned out to be that they provided a genuine space for elaborate and free discussion, where participants could query each other and articulate ideas, whether those ever materialized or not. From radical calendars to curricular models, from pedagogy partners to a giant collective ongoing independent study, the imaginative elaborations at times ended up being implemented, at others simply elaborated with passion without ever becoming part of the Pratt landscape.