MISSION
Our Mission
Located in southern Vermont, the Field Center is an educational center for arts practices that serves as a resource for working artists at all stages of their career to focus on their work, develop their teaching and performance practices and build stronger collaborative relationships with one another. Through working together we help to create and curate structures, solutions and events that inspire equitable, environmentally and socially sustainable practices, interrogate systems, drive creativity and encourage courageous exploration.
We work towards cultivating the arts ecology in the United States while bridging gaps between differing ages, human identities, and borders between people and practices in both the local, national and international communities. We work to create a place that appreciates difference and is rigorous, improvisational, intuitive, healthy and original.
What exactly do we do?
Our primary aim is to provide alternatives to academic models to performance, dance and interdisciplinary arts education. We strive to cultivate accessible and open programs that reduce competition within the arts and exist as a counterpoint to application-based programs.
Programming at the Field Center is year round and is generally divided between weekend-long events and longer workshops/intensives in which small groups live and work together for 7-14 days at a time, generally led by 1-2 teachers from a variety of disciplines. During the summer months we host a variety of festivals and cultural events.
We host several invitation-based residences for artists throughout the year as well, drawing people from a variety of disciplines.
Additionally we work to host 'summits' or symposiums of people within the performing arts fields to gather and discuss aspects of their work and practices as a way of fostering community.