The Southland Institute
(for critical, durational, and
typographic post-studio practices)

Outer Schools:

An evolving resource for higher educational alternatives
compiled by the Southland Institute

Self-organizing schools

• The Parallel School
• The Public School, The Public School for Architecture Brussels
• Trade School
• Open-End-Ed: Chicago

Hybrid and Transdisciplinary Schools

• Art and Theory, New York, NY
• Open School East: Hackney, UK
• Praksis, Oslo, Norway
• Centre for Possible Studies: London, UK
• Arts, Letters, and Numbers: New York
• The Art & Law Program: New York

Art schools

• De Ataliers, Amersterdam, Netherlands
• The Black School
• Fairfield International: Saxmundham, UK.
• Hospitalfield, Scotland
• Islington Mill Art Academy: Salford, UK
• Lunga School, Iceland
• MASS Alexandria: Egypt
• Mountain School of Arts: Los Angeles, CA
• School of Machines, Making, and Make-Believe, Berlin

Ceramics Schools

• The Infinite School, Los Angeles, CA

Film Schools

• Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, San Sebastien, Spain

Graphic design / Typography schools

• Paju Typography Insitute, More info here, Paju-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and urban design schools

• Yestermorrow Design/Build School

Illustration schools

• Illustration School, Porto, Portugal

Independent summer schools

• Alps Art Academy: Tenna, Switzerland
• Hackers and Designers Summer Academy, Netherlands
• Know-How, Show-How, Sofia, Bulgaria
• School of the Alternative, Formerly "Black Mountain School," Black Mountain, NC
• open set, Netherlands
• SOMA, Mexico City
• Typography Summer School, New York and London

Institutionally affiliated summer schools

• Werkplaats Summer School: Isia, Urbino. last held 2019
• Porto Design Summer School: Porto, Portugal
• Sommerakademie Paul Klee at Bern University of the Arts, Bern, Switzerland

Institutionally affiliated free online courses

• EdX
• coursera

Other institutionally affiliated programs

• Whitney Independent Study Program
• Interflugs at UdK Berlin (former home of Freiklasse Berlin [dead link])

Code schools

• Fruitful School, Brooklyn, NY
• Founders and Coders, London, UK, Nazareth, Israel
• La Scuola Open Source, Italy
• School for Poetic Computation (old site), New York, NY
• Open Tech School, Various locations

Comics and sequential art schools

• The Sequential Artists Workshop, Gainsville, FL

Economics schools

• The Alternative School of Economics

Free schools

• free school for art, theory, and practice, an initiative of tranzit.hu
• Free Class Frankfurt
• The Cheapest University, Paris, FR
• Hamtramck Free School, Michigan, USA

Nomadic / portable / online schools

• Free/Slow University of Warsaw
• Mobile Academy

Hypothetical / unrealized schools

• A.A. Bronson's School for Young Shamans
• Manifesta 6 (Notes for an Art School)

Brooklyn schools

• The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
• Sunview Luncheonette
• The School of Making Thinking

MFA alternatives

• Alt MFA, London

Schools on schooling

• Workshop Project
• Shift/Work, Edinburgh, Scotland

Not quite schools, exactly...

• Rupert: Vilnius, Lithuania
• Society of Control

Schools of public art

• UNIDEE - University of Ideas, Biella, Italy

Supplemental programs

• The New Centre for Research and Practice, online

Dance schools

• Ricean School of Dance, Hydra Island, Greece
• Tamalpa Institute, San Rafael, CA, USA

Anti- and Un- schools

• Antiuniversity Now

Accredited "microcollege" projects and initiatives

• Bard's Microcollege Initiative
• Deep Springs College, Deep Springs, CA
• Flagstaff College, Flagstaff, AZ
• Outer Coast, Sitka, AK
• Springhouse Community School Adult Education, Floyd, VA
• Sterling College, Craftsbury Common, VT
• Thoreau College, Viroqua, WI
• Wayfinding Academy, Portland, OR
• Watson Institute, Boulder, CO and Boca Raton, FL

Accredited, degree-offering schools, sub $15k tuition

• Werkplaats Typografie Arnhem, Netherlands
• Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, Netherlands,
  including a new program / department called University of the Underground
• Royal Academy of Art The Hague, Non-Linear Narrative
• Piet Zwart Institut, Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne, Master in Type Design, Renens, Switzerland
• Peter Behrens School of Arts, Dusseldorf

Accredited / degree-offering schools, ($15k+ tuition)

• Transart Institute, New York, NY

Other pedagogical initiatives

• Ellipsis Open School, Tavira, Portugal
• Fall Semester, Miami
• tranzit, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Slovak Republic and Romania
• Q-Art, UK
• Platform for Pedagogy, New York, NY
• Mildred's Lane, upper Delaware River Valley, PA, USA
• Institut für Raumexperimente from 2009-2014 a program led by Olafur Eliasson at Berlin University of the Arts.
Since 2015 "the Institute continues the work of the original five-year project and its goal of supporting artistic research and education."
• Wynter-Wells Drawing School for Environmental Liberation, Location variable

Other (often overlapping) archives of educational alternatives

• the Teachable File and tTF programs [discontinued]
• Open School - Workshop
• Experimental Schooling Institutions (on are.na, by Lukas WP)
• Microcollege Movement page at thoreaucollege.org

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No longer active schools from the recent (and not-so recent) past, along with known dates of operation

• At Land's Edge: Los Angeles, CA, 2015-2018
• Black Mountain College, Black Mountain, North Carolina, 1933-1956
• New York Correspondence School (c. 1950-1970), other links on Ray Johnson
• Fat City School of Finds Art: info here and here, and here 1969-1975
• Global Tools, Florence, Milan, Naples, 1973-1975
• The Independent Art School (more info here) 1999-2005
• Copenhagen Free University:Copenhagen. 2007
• Informal University, Berlin, 20014-2010
• Department 21: program within Royal College of Art in London. 2009-2010
• Flying University 2009-2010(?)
• Pickpocket Almanack 2009-2010
• Melbourne Free School. 2010
• School of Critical Engagement. Detroit, Copenhagen. 2010-2011
• Learning Site, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2005-2012
• Deschooling Classroom. 2009-2012
• Winter School Middle East. 2007-2011
• The Autonomy Project Summer School: Eindhoven. 2011
• MFK (Malmo Free University for Women). 2011
• The Serving Library summer school: Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada. 2012
• Escola Aberta: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 2012
• Wide Open School: Hayward Gallery, London. 2012
• Free University of Liverpool. 2010-2013
• Open Source Publishing Summer School 2013
• Sundown Schoolhouse. Los Angeles, CA. 2007-2012.
  Revived Summer 2014 as The Los Angeles Seminary for Embodied and Civic Arts
• Parallel School Brno, Czech Republic. 2014
• The Art School in the Art School, a self organized platform within Syracuse University's School of Art and Design, 2007-2015
• Open Book Workshop: Michigan, USA. 2015
• Body of Work summer camp: Germany. 2015
• Travelogue Summer School: Porto, Portugal. August 2015
• The Registration Summer School: South London. 2016
• Master Art Direction, ECAL Lausanne: 2012-2016
• School of Missing Studies, Western Balkan capitals

Expired / Dead links (as of 27 Nov 2025)

Expired Art Schools

• Utopia School
• Learning Gardens
• The Easy School: Taipei
• Aformal Academy, online
• The Cabbage Schoool, Marshall, NC
• The Spring Sessions: Amman, Jordan
• Uncertainty School: Seoul, Korea
• Bruce High Quality Foundation University: New York, NY
• École nationale d’art (ENDA) (formerly Institute des hautes études en arts plastiques [Iheap]): New York, Paris
• The Institute of Things to Come, Turin, Italy
• Toma, Southend-on-Sea, UK
• School of the Damned: London
• The After School (twitter): Glasgow, UK

Expired Graphic Design / Typography Schools

• Evening Class: London, UK
• Publishing Class. Netherlands
• Sunset School, Los Angeles, CA

Expired Architecture / Landscape / Urban Design Schools

• Archeworks, Chicago, IL
• Free School of Architecture (more here), Los Angeles, CA
• Ruderal Academy
• The Strelka Institute, Moscow

Expired Independent Summer Schools

• A-B-Z-TXT, Toronto
• Arts Research Cooperative: Los Angeles, CA
• Books From the Future, London
• Conceptual Oregon Performance School (C.O.P.S.)
• House Rules Summer School, UK
• Maybe a School, Maybe a Park: Montreal, QC
• A Escola Livre, São Paulo
• The Ventriloquist Summer School: Oslo, Norway

Expired institutionally affiliated summer schools

• Jan Van Eyck Summer Design Academy: Maastricht, Nederland. (possibly defunct. last website update 2015)
• Asterisk Summer School : Port Noblessner, Tallinn, Estonia, 2010s
• Utopia School Copenhagen, 2016
• GDA Summer Sessions, location varies
• Peter Behrens School of Arts Summer Semester, at University of Dusseldorf

Expired Other Institutionally Affiliated Programs

• the School of Walls and Space (another site here) at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Expired nomadic / portable / online schools

• School of Global Art
• Faculty of Invisibility
• The Silent University
• The Reading School

Expired Brooklyn schools

• Anhoek School
• School of Apocalypse
• Crit

Expired MFA alternatives

• Maumaus, Lisbon, Portugal

Expired Schools on schooling

• Freie Hochschule Stuttgart: Seminar fur Waldorfpadagogik: Stuttgart
• Union of Initiatives for Educational Assembly (UOIEA)
• The School of _______

Expired Schools of public art

• Zz School of Print Media, Kansas City, KS
• Open Source and Space Administration Institute for Alternative Research [OSSAI]

Expired Self-designed curricula

• Enrol Yourself, London, UK

Expired Self-reliance

• New Earth Resiliency Training Module

Expired Other pedagogical initiatives

• Best Friends Learning Gang, Los Angeles

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to submit something for inclusion, or if you find anything here that you would like removed or recategorized, please don't hesitate to contact us.