The Fred Roberts Photography Workshops Now Part of Yale School of Art
Dear Friends,
Since 2011, we have conducted 29 highly successful workshops, clearly focused on our mission to give students worldwide a voice through photography. To date, we have given that voice to more than 500 Beginner students and approximately 200 Advanced students. Additionally, at the start of 2020, before we paused our program, we were fully booked. We had a continuous schedule of eight locations with eight NGO partners.
Over the past two years, like so many others, we have been unable to travel and continue our program. Fortunately, this hiatus has provided the opportunity to review our long-term strategy and goals. The most obvious goal is to create permanence through institutionalization. The structure and methodology of the Workshops have worked extremely well. Clearly, our DNA is sufficiently powerful to be transferred to a large, more permanent host.
While our track record is impressive, we are really a large prototype. We need a larger host in order to evolve. In addition, despite the visible impact we have had on our students, we only have anecdotal evidence of the program’s success. It is important to have the capability to measure outcomes, a principal activity that we have not had the bandwidth to achieve.
The path for our future seems clear. To that end, I am pleased to announce that, going forward, these Workshops will become a part of the Yale School of Art. Given all that you know about our program, I think you will agree that this is the perfect outcome. This combination gives us far more than permanence, while providing the students and faculty of YSA with yet another creative and enriching experience.
I hope that you will continue to follow us, post on our Blog, and track our progress. In addition to permanence, this next step will bring new points of view and new ideas. It will be exciting to see how we evolve in this new environment.
I am grateful to those at Yale who helped to create and facilitate this collaboration, some of whom have been fans of the Workshops since its inception. I am also thankful to my colleagues, partners and supporters without whom we could not have achieved these results. It is thrilling to know that the home I have long sought for these Workshops is now a reality.
Warm regards,
Fred
Website: FredricRoberts.com