In-person courses will return in the fall, along with a wide range of online offerings for students of all ages.
RISD Continuing Education Offers Live and Virtual Art and Design Classes to Suit Every Audience
Image
RISD’s summer 2026 Continuing Education (CE) programs are in full swing, with a wide range of live classes for kids, teens, and adults taking place on campus and at CE’s satellite locations at Tillinghast Place in Barrington and in Westerly. In addition to the 540 Pre-College students whose courses wrapped up at the end of July (representing almost every state in the US and 25 foreign countries), another 50 students from around the world took part this summer in the newly launched Pre-College Online program.
Pre-College Online offers live class sessions, virtual events, and digital resources intended to build a sense of community among remote learners. “We spent a lot of time thinking about how we can engage students in a virtual space,” CE’s Director of Marketing & Communications Jess Egan explains. “It’s never going to look exactly like the on-campus experience, but virtual events, webinars, and resources from campus hubs like the RISD Museum, the Fleet Library, and the Nature Lab help to make students feel connected.”
“By offering Pre-College in a format that doesn’t require travel, we’re hoping to broaden access to our programs and attract a diverse and engaged pool of young artists from around the world,” adds Director of Youth and Pre-Collegiate Programs Andy Jacques.
Image
Image
Also new this year are in-person Summer Intensives, transfer credit-eligible courses for college-age students led by RISD faculty members. This summer’s in-person offerings were Making Space: Foundations of Architectural Design and Poster Design Studio.
The architecture course, taught by Assistant Professor Trevor Herman Hilker, focuses on critical design thinking through abstraction, iteration, and analysis; the relationship between digital and analogue workflows; and introductory architectural drawing and model making. The poster design course, led by RISD alum and Assistant Professor Anther Kiley MFA 13 GD, explores the poster as a playground for experimental form-making, typographic messaging, and large-scale visual systems.
“It was really exciting to see those courses take off,” says Senior Director of Strategic Operations & Adult Programs John Murphy. “We had visiting college students from Virginia Tech, Georgetown, Case Western … even international institutions in Turkey, Taiwan, and Nova Scotia!”
Image
Image
Also in the adult learning category, a new series of weekend workshops has proved to be extremely popular, offering participants the opportunity to try out everything from traditional Japanese shibori dyeing to experimental papermaking to pochoir (stencil) printmaking, a technique that originated in Paris at the turn of the 19th century. “What’s so valuable about these one- and two-day workshops,” says Egan, “is that they provide a low-pressure, low-commitment opportunity to try something new.”
On the other side of the planet, RISD’s Summer Teen Art Institute in Shanghai, China continues to grow. “This custom program is now in its fifth year,” says Jacques. “The classes are taught in a hybrid format with instructors from the US teaching and RISD alums who live in Shanghai serving as on-site tutors and studio monitors.”
“Ever since RISD was founded 150 years ago, CE has been a thread in its fabric,” says Murphy. “Day and evening classes were offered from the get-go and are part of the institution’s DNA. We’re extremely proud to extend that tradition into the present day.”
Simone Solondz / top photo by Jess Egan
August 11, 2026
Related Stories
From its on-campus Pre-College program to online classes and a new Summer Teen Art Institute in Shanghai, RISD CE focuses on accessibility.
The program is run by the college’s Continuing Ed division, which also offers classes and camps for kids, youth and adults and the Advanced Program Online.