---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kanth, Rajani <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 10:08 PM Subject: Rewritten, for Clarity To: Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> 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: [email protected] -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/