The Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design (MAFAD) consists of Bachelor's programmes in Fine Arts | Autonomous Fine Arts and Design and the new English-language Master's programme, POLIS – the learning community: artistic practices as debating laboratories. MAFAD is located in Maastricht's historic city centre, housed in a unique building designed by Heerlen architect Wiel Arets, and the neighbouring Cuyper studio building in the heart of Maastricht. MAFAD boasts excellent studio facilities and high-quality workshops. Thanks to its central location in the Euregio, MAFAD is an art institution with an international profile. Autonomous attitudes, interdisciplinary networks, debate, and heterogeneous collaboration are encouraged in MAFAD's programmes. MAFAD facilitates personal, flexible, and open art education in a non-hierarchical learning environment. The learning community as a didactic model represents joint and equal knowledge sharing, in which the expertise can come from any direction: from student and lecturer, internally and externally. MAFAD enables students to develop into an artist or designer with their own strong artistic vision. MAFAD students are curious, proactive, and engaged. At MAFAD, students are the authors of their own learning environment: they learn to be inquisitive and give form and substance to their courses and future professional practice themselves. Together with the academy, students learn to investigate and name their own artistic motivations, personal drivers, or social urgency. The student develops their own artistic perspective that enables them to develop meaningful objects, processes, and products. MAFAD is part of the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design faculty of the arts and Zuyd University of Applied Sciences.