October 4th, 2022, 8pm EST
Run Time – 1 Hour

This presentation outlines how a Homegrown MFA can enhance your skills, broaden your professional network, open opportunities for paid employment, and most importantly increase your confidence in the validity of your creative practice.

Paulette Richards survived a ten month stint in Senegal as a 2013/ 2014 Fulbright Scholar without contracting any tropical diseases, but sometime during her service as an artist in residence at the Institut français de Saint Louis, the puppet bug bit her hard.  Hoping to launch a second-act career, she did a little research and turned up the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program at the University of Connecticut, but taking on debt to pay the tuition did not seem practical.  Fortunately she lived in Atlanta, home of the Center for Puppetry Arts so she volunteered as a docent in the World’s of Puppetry Museum and designed a Homegrown MFA in Animatronic Puppetry for herself.  Upon “graduating” after a year of intensive study, she was accepted into the National Puppetry Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center and subsequently co-curated the Living Objects:  African American Puppetry exhibit at the University of Connecticut’s Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry with Dr. John Bell.