CFA AI Toolmaking for the Arts Residency

The College of Fine Arts and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry invite CFA faculty to apply for a one-month summer residency to develop educational tools that bring generative AI into arts teaching — critically, creatively and on our own terms.

Artists have always built their own tools — from the loom to the synthesizer to p5.js. The most transformative creative technologies have come from practitioners who understood what the existing tools couldn't do. AI is no different. The tools we need don't exist yet. This residency empowers CFA faculty to build them: open-source, arts-centered AI tools and resources that serve our classrooms, our students and the broader creative community.

Expressions of Interest for Summer 2026 are due on April 6th, 2026.

Complete the Expression of Interest Form

Program Overview

The CFA AI Toolmaking for the Arts Residency is a funded opportunity for up to 3 CFA faculty to spend June 2026 building something that helps students engage with AI more thoughtfully and creatively. You’ll work alongside a small cohort at the STUDIO with student RA support, access to shared technical resources and weekly gatherings. At the end, your tool is documented and openly published for others to use, pilot and build upon.

What Counts as a Tool?

We define “tool” broadly. It’s anything that empowers arts educators and students to engage with AI more critically, creatively or effectively. Your proposal might describe:

  • Technical tools: custom applications, Jupyter notebooks, fine-tuned AI models or AI pipelines configured for a specific course
  • Designed artifacts: card decks, worksheet sets, physical toolkits or game systems for classroom discussions
  • Curricular resources: structured workshop frameworks, teaching playbooks, curated datasets or assessment rubrics
  • Critical tools: AI audit toolkits, comparative analysis tools or resources for critical inquiry
  • Performance and experiential: interactive installations, real-time systems or simulations that engage students directly

What matters is that it serves a clear educational purpose, has target users within a CFA course or program and includes at least one component that can be openly shared and reused.

This residency is a pilot — we’re exploring the model as we go. If you have an idea that doesn’t fit neatly into this call, reach out.

Why Open Access

Outcomes made through this residency are intended to be released as an open-source resource — freely available to educators, artists and students everywhere. We believe that tools designed by arts practitioners shouldn’t be locked behind paywalls or institutional boundaries. By sharing openly, we multiply impact: a tool built for one CFA course can become a resource adopted by arts education and inquiry worldwide.

Application Information

Open to all full-time CFA faculty. Applicants must be available during June 2026 and able to attend weekly cohort meetings in Pittsburgh.

  • April 6, 2026 | expression of interest deadline (11:59 pm ET)
  • April 17, 2026 | residents notified
  • June 1–30, 2026 | residency month (in-person at STUDIO)
  • July 15, 2026 | initial documentation due
  • August 2026 | publication on STUDIO website
  • Fall 2026 | optional public presentation at the STUDIO / Pilot deployment in CFA courses or workshops

Submit a brief expression of interest. Your application should include:

  • A brief overview of what you’d like to build and what educational need it addresses
  • How you think you might build it out through the residency
  • What forms of support you anticipate (RA skills, software, hardware, technical consulting)

Review the expression of interest form for full application details.

June 2026. In-person at the STUDIO. The only required group commitment is a weekly cohort lunch/meeting. Beyond that, you set your own working rhythm. An end-of-month demo brings the cohort together to share progress. Documentation is finalized over the summer, with full publication by September.

Each tool/resource is piloted in a CFA course or workshop during Fall 2026 (the context is up to you). Open-source components are published. An optional public presentation at the STUDIO in September gives the work visibility.

We evaluate expression of interest on:

  • Educational Alignment: How it relates to a  CFA learning need and impact for students in the College
  • Distinctive CFA Lens: How it integrates critical, creative and/or ethical competencies, not just tool adoption
  • Potential for Impact: Plausible reach from CFA courses through to broader external adoption and reuse
  • Openness and Dissemination: A (tentative) plan for open release and documentation that supports reuse beyond CMU

  • $10,500 allocation per resident (with $7,500 dedicated for summer support, and the remainder for research assistants, materials and other project needs)
  • Dedicated workspace at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
  • Access to shared GPU workstations and computing infrastructure
  • Professional documentation support (photography and videography)
  • Weekly cohort lunches and technical consultant office hours
  • Open-source publication support

Each resident receives a $10,500 allocation. The primary use is protected time for the lead applicant (summer support or stipend). You may also propose other configurations — for example, allocating more toward RA time, modest materials or collaborator support — if it improves feasibility and impact.

If you choose summer salary or activity pay, it will be subject to benefits and tax withholding. All funds must be spent by September 30, 2026, with complete receipts and documentation submitted to your business manager.

Terms

  • Open to full-time CFA faculty.
  • One-month residency (June 1–30, 2026) with primary work in Pittsburgh at the STUDIO.
  • All funds must be spent by September 30, 2026.
  • Funds not allocated toward completion of the project at the end of the period of performance will be returned to the fund.
  • Complete receipts and documentation for any expenses must be submitted to your business manager as soon as possible in order to allow the business manager time to submit no more than 30 days after the expense is incurred.
  • Purchase of services (including the use of cloud services or AI products and tools) require advance notice and must be approved by the university. This includes reimbursement where you have directly paid for services as it is coming from university funds.
  • All planned expenses must be discussed in advance with your relevant business manager to plan for tax exempt purchases, contracting, licensing and other implications, etc.
  • At minimum, the project lead must be present for a kick off meeting. Funds are not active until a kick off meeting has occurred.
  • All residents must adhere to the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry’s policies and procedures.
  • The STUDIO staff will not provide purchasing support or hiring support. This must be coordinated with your business manager.

Reporting Requirements

  • Timeline and Expectations
    • Mid-July 2026 | initial documentation bundle due (includes draft documentation of your tool)
    • August 2026 | final documentation and open-source materials published through STUDIO website.
    • Fall 2026 | optional presentation at the STUDIO; brief pilot deployment report from using the tool in a course or workshop.
    • December 2026 | short impact statement contributed to the program’s Year 1 Impact Brief
  • Selected projects will be featured on the CFA Website. The project team will provide a short description (< 100 words) and representative image at the initiation of the project.
  • It is the intention for these outcomes to live on a CFA and/or STUDIO website to celebrate the ongoing work of faculty recipients of the grant.
  • A request for a public presentation or exhibition of your work during the academic year may be made upon its completion.
  • In online documentation, publications or other outputs that result, it is to be noted that "The work was supported in part by funding from the College of Fine Arts’ AI Toolmaking for the Arts Residency.”

  • Daragh Byrne (CFA Working Group on AI)
  • Nica Ross (Director, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry)
  • Harrison Apple (Associate Director, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry)
  • Jenn Joy Wilson (Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice, CFA)