In January 2018, Frances Bronet became the president of New York City?s Pratt Institute ? only the twelfth person to rise to the post since its founding in 1887.
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Now, Bronet sets the course for an institution regarded as one of the country?s most influential art and design schools. For this week?s Milkshake, we asked her about how she wields the cultural and political power that comes with the job. ?It?s a heavy question,? she says. ?[Pratt] is an extraordinary place and has had a very, very long history of engaging with New York City, with Brooklyn, with the local communities ? and what you do when you have that kind of relationship over a long period of time is you build trust.? Trust, she says, builds relationships ? and power is best exercised within that context. ?For example, because we have had a long-standing K-12 program in the community, over 100 years old, serving 1200 students a year at this point ? we have relationships that we’ve cultivated for many, many decades. We decided we would think about what would happen if we could build a public high school that could bring together the power of design thinking and doing, with the importance of social justice, ultimately empowering students to make change in the world.? The school is now developing that program in collaboration with the Bank Street College of Education.
We also asked Bronet how the ...