Raison d'etre

So I just got back from the Radical Unschooling weeklong blowout by the beach on Salt Spring Island in BC (thank you Craig & Gillian--you guys rock!) and the whole experience reinforced two of my longest held beliefs:

1. Unschoolers are the coolest people in the universe (with the possible exception of the inhabitants of RufusX in the Ig!ntz galaxy who truly know how to party like its 9,999,999,999)

2. There ought to be a permanent Unschooling Conference Center.

The purpose of this blogspot is to explore the possibility of creating #2 for #1, because after all, unschooling is all about manifesting reality out of dreams.

The Vision


In a nutshell, a permanent, fixed Unschooling Conference Center looks a lot like summer camp for adults, with everything parents might need to raise their children in freedom.

It might contain:

1. A large wooded tract of land with access to a pond/river/stream/lake, and not too far from a major airport.

2. A main conference center building

3. cabins and dormitory accommodations

4. a large communal kitchen, cafeteria, vegetable garden

5. an art barn with enough room to accommodate our creative passions, including, but not limited to: candle making, finger painting, tie-dye, mecha construction, pottery, welding, beer making, glass making (for the beer, of course, eh?), etc.

6. Gaming Center, Media Center, Library, Music Studio, Pirate Ninja dojo...

...and whatever else we imagine it ought to have.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Interest

Is there any interest out there for such a place?

20 comments:

Ren Allen said...

You must be picking up TN vibes dude!:)
Just yesterday we spent the afternoon and evening with a bunch of unschoolers and other cool folks down at the Nolichucky river and several of us started talking about building an unschooling commmunity.

It's my dream to have a couple of acres surrounded by unschoolers (or just folks that are really cool and love children).

The other thought is more of what you described, a place to have camp outs and such. We're going to host a gathering down at the river soon and I keep dreaming of a conference center. But you need to build it out here. lol

unschoolingsupermom said...

Oh, man. Yeah absolutley. Many of us have been talking about such a place.

mesmith said...

uh, YEAH!!!

Craig

kelli said...

I think it sounds wonderful. And I think it would be great for there to be more than one :) Just like there's more than one location usually for camps. Tim and I have set up locations like this for language camps.

My brain's a goin'

Renee Cabatic said...

lotsa interest here

Stephanie said...

Oh, yes. Definitely.

Carolyn said...

Love it! Have you ready anything about cohousing? Check out cohousing.org

Might have some good ideas to build on/steal from... ;)

So fun seeing you all in BC.

The Wahoo Winklers

dharmamama said...

Yes.

dharmamama said...

Yes.

dharmamama said...

Yes.

Pittsburgh Midwife said...

I concur with the Co-Housing/Intentional Community Idea. I mean having a RU only camp is cool too, but we'd sell everything we own to afford to move and live at said RU Utopia!

helen said...

dear jon,

we *love* the idea:) amazing to get to spend time with you and hear you "talk it."

be well,
helen

hi, i'm kat. said...

yes, absolutely.... that's a huge reason we moved here!!

Alex Polikowsky said...

Count us in!

Unschoolers Rock the Campground said...

I have often said I would love to live in an intentional community where the #1 requirement for membership would be you have to be kind to your kids. Imagine, being surrounded by that? Not just at a conference?

~Katherine said...

I'm definitely interested and I would be thrilled to do anything I could to help. I'm in SC at the northwestern corner of the state about 12 miles from the NC border. About 2 hours from Ren in TN, one hour from Asheville.

gillgodd said...

I can't say anything about living but definitely yes to spending time. Right now if something like that existed I would be there before the end of the year in a flash! I'm looking for somewhere 'intentional' and child-friendly to spend time with my children for a little while this year and haven't found anything yet.
Gillian

Nancy said...

absolutely interested.

~Katherine said...

Thought I would spread the word about this blog and maybe get more conversation going around about the idea... So here: http://familyrun.ning.com/group/unschoolingdream

laura said...

we've been talking about campground and retreat ideas for years but we always run into that one big factor...MONEY. having a lot of people with a common goal would be wonderful because everyone could contribute in so many different ways depending on their resources and talents!