ESAD_Orleans About

Orléans School of Art and Design is happy to welcome you here!

The Orléans School of Art and Design is a public art school with a specificity: Design and only Design is taught. Its approach is resolutely artistic and turns towards the most contemporary questions. Here, it is a question of the future of the printed and digital edition – or both together; of IoT and data sculpture, of ecological cohabitation and design commons, of media archeology and design of time. This gives the school a somewhat unique place in the educational landscape of Design in France and in Europe.

Over a period of three years, students study Product and Spatial Design and Visual and Graphic Design (Diplôme National d’Art, French national diploma, Bachelor degree in Art). If students want to, they can cross their studies with the ENSAPVS (in Design & Architecture) or with the Bourges National Art School (in Art & Design). In five years (Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique, Master degree), students are trained in Media Design or Design Commons. These graduate fields are resolutely focused on the most current international practices and research. It is possible to further studies with a post-master’s degree (“Internet of Things” or “Cinema, Audiovisuel, Media Design and Image Animation” in one year; and an Advanced Research Degree in Design in three years. Finally, our preparatory class prepares students for entry exams to art schools.

The future is coming✨

Orléans School of Art and Design revives the social, scientific and cultural role of art through design. The design it teaches could be defined as art that is committed, at the heart of our current society, and which seeks through art to answer issues raised by the technological environment and the industrial society. Since the latter has changed nature over the past few years, the school has put emphasis on the digital environment. It offers students practical and theoretical knowledge, methods and means, to allow them to both assess fairly and act on this environment by transforming the effects it produces on our society, ways of living and cultures.

It gives them the ability to link these effects to ecological, political and social issues as well as ideologies, discourses and emerging sciences. It enables them to situate their action in the long history of art and in the milieu of modern art and design.

Our time needs designers, i.e people able to pick up signals of how the world is, and to make the world of tomorrow better than it is. To do so, designers must have the ability to engage in dialogue and create with urban planners, writers, artists, architects, engineers, scientists, administrators, politicians and men and women in the business community. That is why, we think the designer of the 21st century must, at the same time, have the intelligence and sensitivity of the artist, master the methods of design and have a sound, practical, technical and intellectual education.

On this point Orléans School of Art and Design has many assets to offer: a committed teaching staff, technical workshops equipped the most advanced tools; sustained activity in conjunction with the academic community in the field of research in and through art and design; a productive, local business and economic fabric… On the strength of these projects with public and private partners and its many relations with schools and universities in France and abroad; it welcomes 300 students, at least twenty different nationalities, and each year attracts a great number of candidates from all over France and the world.

Born out of the “Free Art School of Orléans, established in 1787, the “Beaux Arts School”, then the “Institut of Visual Arts”; Orléans School of Art and Design was re-founded in 2011. It is located in the historical centre of the city of Orléans, in the heart of the Région Centre-Val de Loire; it enjoys a privileged location in a booming conurbation, near Paris and major routes.

A true generator of culture, Orléans School of Art and Design regularly hosts events, exhibitions (in its Gallery) and conferences (at the Musée des Beaux-Arts). It is an essential actor in the life of the conurbation through its inclusion in the local, cultural life (national dance centre, national drama centre, regional contemporary arts centre, house of architecture, theatre, current music scene, etc.). 

Unique in its approach to design, Orléans School of Art and Design is crucial in the network of public art and design schools under the pedagogical authority of the Ministry of Culture, and has a true European dimension. The quality of the students’ projects speak for themselves, so does the professional integration of the students. In short, we are pleased to be here.