This month marks the first anniversary of Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) becoming an affiliate of CalArts. While it’s been a year of extraordinary challenges for both institutions—and American higher education in general—it’s also been a year of milestones.
In January, VCFA completed its first residency at CalArts—a successful introduction to CalArts’ campus, despite disruptions from the Southern California wildfires. This summer’s residency, which ran for nine days in June and July, was lauded by VCFA students, faculty, and staff alike as one of the best in recent memory, thanks in part to the many CalArtians who worked hard alongside the VCFA team to ensure they felt welcome and supported.
The summer residency brought together more than 200 MFA students, faculty, and visiting artists across VCFA’s six low-residency programs—Film, Graphic Design, Visual Art, Music Composition, Writing, and Writing for Children and Young Adults (WCYA)—for a vibrant and deeply collaborative experience.
The move to CalArts, first announced in April 2024, was a defining step in the long-term partnership between the two institutions. VCFA remains an academically independent and separately accredited college, now operating as an affiliate of CalArts. While the college’s structure remains low-residency, relocating its twice-yearly in-person sessions to Southern California has created new opportunities for interdisciplinary connection and creative experimentation.
“We gathered not as silos, but as a single creative force,” said VCFA President Andrew Ramsammy in a letter to the VCFA community. “This wasn’t accidental. This is who we are becoming.”
A Shift in Culture and Practice
Summer 2025 also signaled a philosophical shift in how VCFA’s programs intersect. Students and faculty alike described the residency as an inflection point where the institution’s long-standing interdisciplinary values came alive in new and urgent ways.
Over the course of the residency, writers collaborated with composers, filmmakers co-taught with graphic designers, and visual artists staged work in real time with poets and performers. Public events included film screenings, thesis exhibitions, critique sessions, a sold-out music performance in CalArts’ Roy O. Disney Concert Hall, and a series of cross-program lectures and panels.
The residency also featured several new initiatives:
- Hunger Mountain Live, a literary and performance event presented in partnership with Los Angeles’ Da Poetry Lounge, transformed a traditional reading into what Ramsammy called “a public act of truth-telling and performance” at the Wild Beast (watch a clip).
- Unapologetically Creative, a new VCFA podcast, launched with interviews across disciplines—highlighting the stories, practices, and perspectives of artists, authors, scholars, and designers (listen on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you listen to podcasts).
- The Community Assembly Series continued with new sessions focused on equity, labor, technology, and justice in the arts, reaffirming VCFA’s commitment to critical public dialogue (check here and here).
As the institutions look ahead to the second year of their affiliation, residencies are already on the calendar for January and summer 2026. The evolving CalArts–VCFA partnership continues to energize the community, bringing renewed stability and enthusiasm to VCFA. Steady, strong incoming class sizes have replaced past fluctuations—and with winter application numbers currently trending 30% higher than last year—the outlook is optimistic.
