Integrating AI into Art School Practice
Format: Online (Live & recorded)
Time: Begins October 29, 2025 and meets every Wednesday for 6 weeks at 4 pm Pacific Time.
Session Length: ~1.5 hours/week
Price: $700 CAD (~$500 USD)
Contact Brad if interested: brad@apositiononretreat.com
Course Description:
This professional development course is designed for university-level art professors interested in integrating generative AI into their own practice and classroom. Participants will explore foundational and advanced uses of large language models, generative image and video tools, AI music generation, narration, and creative coding—all through the lens of artistic practice and pedagogy. This is not a course on technology alone, but an imagining of how AI can become a collaborative partner in studio work, critique, teaching, and conceptual development.
Target Audience:
Art professors and educators working in painting, printmaking, video, photography, sound, digital media, art theory, and interdisciplinary practices who want to understand and teach AI-enhanced creative methods.
Learning Objectives:
Use ChatGPT, MidJourney, Suno, and ElevenLabs in creative and pedagogical contexts
Explore AI as a co-creator in painting, video, sound, and narrative practices
Employ LLMs to support lecture preparation, critique, grading, and classroom ideation
Develop AI-enhanced assignments and modules tailored to their studio courses
Modules:
Module 1: AI as Mirror for Artistic Intuition
Explore how to use your own artwork (paintings, prints, etc.) to generate moodboards, new compositions, concept art, and temporal extensions of your visual language. Learn how AI can reflect and evolve your aesthetic intuitions.
Module 2: Conversing with Machines (ChatGPT in the Studio)
Use ChatGPT to deepen project ideation, synthesize artistic influences, and find theoretical frameworks. Professors will explore how to guide students to engage with AI as a philosophical and artistic collaborator.
Module 3: Teaching, Feedback, and Documentation with AI
Leverage AI to generate lecture summaries, critique notes, action items, and student feedback—all in your own voice. Learn how to streamline grading and enhance the communication of ideas across various learning styles.
Module 4: Image, Video, Music, Narration as Time-Based Media
Use MidJourney to explore composition, atmosphere, and image-styling. Learn how to animate or extend static works using Runway/Sora/Midjourney and prompt temporal narratives from still imagery.
Generate soundtracks with Suno and narrated audio with ElevenLabs to create immersive installations or asynchronous teaching tools. Explore poetic narration, ambient sound design, and experimental voice use.
Module 6: Generative Systems & Coding Without Code
Explore how to build generative artworks using p5.js and ChatGPT without needing prior coding experience. Participants will design simple simulations, interactive systems, or generative visuals.
30 minutes for Q&A and ideation:
Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions or brainstorm with Brad on AI applications within their studio courses.
Tools Used:
ChatGPT, MidJourney, Runway/Sora, Suno, ElevenLabs, p5.js
Mental Health & Storytelling
Format: Online (Live & Recorded) | 6 Weeks | Any Creative Medium
Time: Begins February 4, 2026 and meets every Wednesday till March 11, at 4 pm Pacific Time
Session Length: ~1.5 hours/per week
Instructor: Dr. Brad Necyk, PhD (Psychiatry, Arts-Based Research), MFA, BFA, BComm
Bio: Dr. Brad Necyk is an award-winning artist, filmmaker, writer, and researcher whose work explores the intersection of mental health, creativity, and storytelling. Holding a Governor General’s Gold Medal–winning PhD in Psychiatry (Arts-Based Research), Brad has exhibited internationally, published widely, and collaborated with diverse communities to share stories of resilience and healing. His background as a postdoctoral fellow in cinema, research associate in film, and long-standing university educator uniquely positions him to guide students in transforming deeply personal experiences into art that resonates on a universal scale.
Prerequisites: None — open to all levels
Mediums: Writing, Visual Art, Movement, Film, Music, Mixed Media
Price: $700 CAD (~$500 USD)
Contact Brad with questions: brad@apositiononretreat.com
Course Overview
This course offers a creative deep dive into transforming lived experiences into universal stories that foster empathy, connection, and understanding. Based on my Governor General’s Gold Medal-winning arts-based PhD in Psychiatry and over a decade of mental health–focused exhibitions, filmmaking, writing, and advocacy, the course views personal narratives as sites of meaning-making and knowledge generation.
You will explore how to turn your experiences — whether of physical or mental illness, healing, resilience, or transformation — into works of art that others can feel, understand, and carry with them.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, you will:
1. Identify and refine a personal narrative connected to mental health or life experience.
2. Translate personal experience into a universal story through metaphor, symbol, and form.
3. Develop a completed creative work (in your chosen medium) that communicates emotional truth.
4. Understand how art functions as testimony, witness, and knowledge creation.
5. Gain tools for universalizing your personal experience so others can empathetically engage with that experience, especially when representing sensitive or vulnerable experiences.
Final Project
Create a finished creative work in any medium that communicates an emotional truth from your lived experience in a way that resonates universally. This work should be ready to share in a public or semi-public context.
Who This Course is For
Artists working with trauma, mental illness, recovery, or personal history
Artists living with mental illness
Mental health advocates and peer support workers
Anyone who wants to transform life experiences into powerful, meaningful art