A unique place in Maine where academic disciplines fragmented for study on campuses reunite before the great issues that face people today. Issues of workplace and home, community and isolation, continuity and change, possession and dispossession. It is a place where the practice of the arts is ignited by the challenge of inquiry. Now it focuses on counseling expectant single teen-age mothers, offering advice and support. While the immediate location of this cultural research is Maine, approaches and skills learned in the program can be applied to the study of other regions and to comparative studies between regions.
Students engage in an independent research project of their own, carrying it from beginning to end.
They do their documentary work in words or in photographs. They collect, shape, select, analyze, organize and refine their materials from start to finished form. In doing so they provoke thought and practice artistry. The Salt Institute in Portland is the base for Salt's operations. Here seminars, individual instruction and critiques take place.