AmbitioUS is providing a one-year fellowship grant to support a one-year research project — initiated by Caroline Woolard and conducted in collaboration with Dan Taeyoung, Jonathan Lee, Luana Marques Soares, Sruti Suryanarayanan, and Eric Triantafillou — to investigate emergent online networks and cooperative business models for higher education in the visual arts. The resulting report commissioned by CCI and titled Spirits and Logistics details ways grantmakers, universities, and arts Institutions can begin collaborating with the BIPOC-led cooperative movement to build the future of Art Education. Many of the report’s key findings are outlined by Woolard and her co-creators in this 20-minute video presentation.

Artist Caroline Woolard, who initiated this collaborative research team, has been exploring the idea of an alternative business model for art school education for many years, including co-founding international peer-to-peer learning network Tradeschool.coop (2009-2019) and co-authoring the report Art.coop with Nati Linares (2021). Her systems-level focus has required an artistic practice that is grounded in conducting extensive research. This funding affords time and resources to explore cooperative business models for delivering higher education in the arts that are based on collectivized approaches that bring costs down for emerging artists.