September 2017, the Dutch Art Institute radicalised its chain of meaningful transformations, evolving from an ongoing process of learning and unlearning: the time has come to bid farewell to bricks and walls.

For a period of two years (to begin with) DAI Roaming Academy will be welcoming students, tutors and staff at various, changing locations in-and outside of the Netherlands. Click Calendar 2017-2019 for an overview of our upcoming landings. Our office will continue to be located in Arnhem. 

About US

The Dutch Art Institute a.k.a. DAI, a.k.a. DAI ROAMING ACADEMY, is an itinerant program that fosters a variety of practices in the field of art and theory, and invigorates (collective) thinking, researching, making, speaking, roaming, curating, performing, writing and publishing, with at its heart, a fully accredited MA curriculum: DAI Art Praxis 

DAI is acclaimed for its inventive modus operandi, its generous semi-public program, and the transformative potentiality of its curriculum, developed in long time co-operation with a precise selection of progressive organisations as well as with independent practitioners and researchers at the forefront of artistic inquiry, production and distribution.

Infrastructures can be artworks too

Not to be compared to any studio-based program and certainly not to the notorious edu-factories in the capitals of capitalism, DAI offers a small scale program with a highly experimental and agile profile that in many ways exceeds the limits of conventional art education. 

Ten times per year, students and tutors plug into the so-called DAI week: an experimental learning environment/think tank/networking platform/theory camp, a quite funky temporary art commune, a spaceship landing at a variety of locations in-and outside the Netherlands.

Structured by a dense weaving of seminars, face to face conversations, cooperative study groups, walks, communal meals, work-outs, guest-curated as well as tutor-or student-led lectures, presentations and performances, these monthly, one week-long conclaves last from early morning until late at night.  

The highly concentrated time of the DAI-week functions as a pressure cooker for an exchange of authorised and unauthorised, vernacular and academic knowledges, that accumulate throughout the year, with every month's gathering. Students are expected to continue developing their independent research while simultenaously engaging with the DAI's discursive input, co-operative methodologies and communal support structure. During DAI-weeks everybody involved is accommodated in youth hostels or similar structures. Lunches and dinners with students, faculty and guests are important shared moments which mark the DAI's communal aspirations. Conviviality is at the heart of the program: infrastructures can be artworks too.

Embedded in the support structure of the Graduate School of the ArtEZ University of the Arts our program is, for the largest part, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education.