The project proposal “The Nomadic School of the Arts” has been approved by the jury of the Voorsprongfonds (VSF), who described it as “one of the best, if not the best project submitted”. With a total budget of approximately 580,000€, we will be able to engage in meaningful educational development and innovation for two years.

The Pioneering Fund. The term first appeared in the course of March, but it was not until May that it became clear that it would all have to happen very quickly. It had to be clear before the summer recess which projects we would be going for, and the end of August was the deadline for handing over the file to Hogent. At the beginning of June, we sent out a call to all OC and department chairs and the coordinators of the deanery to harvest so many project proposals, which yielded some 20 projects. In a subsequent consultation with the entire group, the 20 or so projects submitted were clustered according to three pillars: modular education, nomadic education and inclusiveness. A (non-exhaustive) number of tags to indicate the pillars: modular education (pre-courses, lifelong learning, microcredentials, interdisciplinary education, and much more), nomadic education (off-campus education, periphery, temporary infill, and much more) and inclusivity (curriculum scans, (neuro)diversity, participatory art practice, and much more).

Our writing team for the VSF proposal quickly came to the conclusion that, in terms of content, the three aforementioned pillars can be summarised into one large project: the nomadic school of arts, with an on-campus and an off-campus component. A large integrated project also allows for more efficient project management (and thus lower overhead costs) and proved to be a pragmatic solution to the (volunteer) writing team’s time constraints.