,

“You think black kids don’t want to go to Sly Park, get out in the woods, and play their clarinets to the deer. Huh? Why would you think that? That’s fucking weird. Stop lying. Stop being weird. Be human, right?” — Harley White Jr.

,

“Limiting choices, and making a clear path has become the strategy. Programming education this narrowly eliminates the type of student I was in college. Taking all those weird classes and even the classes that didn’t necessarily apply to my major allowed me to become my true self, and it continues to benefit my work today.” — Gioia Fonda

,

“He went on to say ‘I would pull out of the system and go straight into the community and educate that way.’ It was just kind of this moment where it went boom. I didn’t even realize that that’s what I was doing until he pointed it out. He thought I was right in finding all these different people who teach in different ways, allowing for education to happen in an immersive, engaging and relevant way that we feel comfortable with.” — Estella Sanchez

,

“My education had imprinted the role of cultural producer and culture maker on me, so if we’re only making culture for a tiny number of people that happen to avail themselves to museums and galleries; that’s not making culture that’s serving a micro-culture.” — Gioia Fonda

,

“My school was very much inside a bubble. I initially wanted to blame the program because I didn’t realize until after I started showing other people’s art or selling my art that you have to learn and do all these things yourself. You have to make the connections; the community aspect of supporting yourself as an artist is so essential and different from anything technical that I learned in school.” — Trisha Rhomberg