---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanth, Rajani <rkanth@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 10:08 PM
Subject: Rewritten, for Clarity
To: Michel Bauwens <michel@p2pfoundation.net>





                                         The Campus of the Living Arts: Birth of a Notion*

There is a felt-need , today, globally, to bypass formal structures based on competition and private gain in favor of institutions vested with structures/processes that are life-enhancing, based on mutuality, and co-operation, and  a  true  regard for the public weal. I would think very few educated have any doubts left , after the  financial debacle  of 2008, as to what untrammeled acquisitiveness can do to an economy and society: especially its moral  fibre.
Now, the spirit of experimentation  is as American as apple-pie:  and Utah shares that within its unique heritage of Mormonism ,  which  started out as a great  experiment in  communal living ,  imbued with  a co-operative ethos. It is in that spirit  of voluntary self-organisation (that  Tocqueville  found so heady about America) I  am proposing to  help institute  an alternate , novel,   Association titled a Campus of the Living Arts – part school, part trading post, part amphitheatre, part village -  a corpus  of people  wishing to pursue autonomous, non-formalistic ways  of living, learning, and working , inclusive of gaining and sharing diverse skills.  After initially forming and charging various Committees to help plan the Project,  there will be a Convention held , likely in Salt Lake City,  where  the specifics will be put to resolution in  a Town-Hall style Meeting.
The Campus will be a sort of a vast ‘Skills-Exchange’  facility,  where Participants, short term and long term,  engage one another, in a gamut of  diverse activities. The idea is to develop ‘Tools of Conviviality’, the entire Campus being such a tool. It’s functioning  will be non-formal and voluntaristic . Many of the engagements will be practical , and conducive to self-employment  and self-development. All Participants will have a choice of donating something: their time, skills, and/or monies to the Project - as , and when,  they choose.
The Campus, eventually , will have residential annexes , sort of like a village. It will ‘evolve’ over time in ecologically and societally sound ways,  through mutual deliberation. It will also aim at self-sufficiency,  and may use its own labor-time  based scrip. Initially , it will seek donations of materials: land, materials, funds, etc.: but,  eventually,  will try to  finance itself. It will be self-governing in microcosms , rather than as a centralized entity. Effectively, all its norms will evolve, it is hoped,  in the  very making of it.
The Campus  will be  a living, societal, participatory, civic, community-enterprise that will seek to model itself on the best norms available so as to be a template, universally. It will be an autonomous, partly residential , civic  Campus ,  in  a natural, semi-rural setting, in Utah,  that will encourage interactive learning/gathering  of  civilisational  and cultural skills, over a  very large  range, to improve the Quality of Life of All. It will  aim at being  a  broad, interactive  co-respective facility and a living , self-sustaining, civic, communal  entity: economically viable,  self-managing ,  and  ecologically sustainable .
The ambit of skills, specialties, and learning options might , provisionally,  include:  General Arts & Crafts (pottery, quilt-making, basket-weaving, organic farming, bee-keeping,  et.al.), the  Culinary Arts; Music , Film, and Theatre; Philosophy,  Anthropology, Literature and Classics;  Parenting and Familial modes, Architecture and Theology;   Ecology, Sustainability and Human Well-Being; Ideas and Ideology;   Culture, Community,  and  Civilisational Studies;  Healing and Therapeutic Studies, and  perhaps even some Select Natural Sciences.
Now that we have , perforce, ‘globalised’ the world, it might  well be time, with Projects such as just delineated,  to ‘re-localise’ it, a bit  closer to the simpler needs and drives of ordinary  humanity.

*For more information, pl. write to:  livingartscampus@gmail.com