From a baking school helping to cook up a business plan to an arts retreat that will get those creative juices flowing, we pull up a chair at some of the best courses on offer.
So you want to start your own business and feel like you should go back to school for a bit first? The $1,000 question (literally) for many is: do you shell out for an MBA? While a formal business degree sounds impressive, opinion is split on whether it’s worth the money and there are a plethora of more tailored alternatives out there. If you’ve ever thought of starting a bakery, a furniture company or, well, any company at all, read on for a lesson from the schools that are giving you the tools to succeed at a fraction of the cost.
An architectural marvel sits at the end of a winding coastal road on Deer Isle in Maine. Cut into the forest are thirty-six cedar-shingled buildings designed by modernist architect Edward Larrabee Barnes; they seem to float above the island’s lichen-and-moss covered floor, which slopes down to the Atlantic.
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts was founded in 1950 (it moved to its current location in 1961) without any set curriculum, teaching faculty or student body. Instead, every summer hundreds of students–from recent college graduates to retirees–descend on Haystack for two-week workshops in ceramics, weaving, woodworking, metalsmithing, glassblowing or printmaking. They are taught by a rotating roster of experts. “The most radical thing about this place is that its entire tenor changes every two weeks,” says Paul Sacaridiz, Haystack’s director since 2015. “It was never an attempt at a traditional school.”
When we visit, studios remain lit late at night as students finish their projects. Among them is Anna Krist, a Brooklyn-based office worker who sells her stoneware vases, jugs, and planters online. “I daydream about doing pottery full time and I came to Haystack almost as a test,” she says. “If I have the ability to do nothing but this for two weeks, will I still want to do it? Will it still feel special?” The answer is a resounding yes, although striking out on her own remains an aspiration.
For more seasoned artists and craftspeople, two weeks of uninterrupted studio time is a gift. “In Chicago, I’m getting pinged all day by my cell phone; I’m never fully locked into what I’m making,” says Dee Clements, a textile artist. Clements founded Studio Herron in 2010, making fashion accessories and home goods for clients such as retailer CB2 and Chicago’s Freehand hotel. But by 2017 she was feeling stuck in a rut. She came to Haystack to teach a workshop on rug weaving and ended up experimenting in its digital-fabrication lab and woodworking studio. “My whole practice changed at Haystack; it was an incubator for my ideas,” she says.
Many of the US’s most important craftspeople have come through Haystack; some as students, some as teachers, many as both. Among them is weaver Anni Albers, glass artist Dale Chihuly and ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu. It is a place where the rigidity of academic institutions dissolves, which is just as crucial for artists as it is for entrepreneurs. In recent years School director Sacaridiz has seen a pattern at Haystack: more crafts-people are taking intensive workshops in place of attending graduate school, where a year’s tuition can cost about $50,000 (€45,500). By contrast, Haystack’s sessions are more affordable $1,500 (€1,400) and more than 150 scholarships are available. “For a lot of people, Haystack represents a possible next step,” says Sacaridiz.