What would I consider a desirable society?

THE SCHOOL FOR DESIGNING A SOCIETY (SDAS), ESTABLISHED IN 1991, IS AN ONGOING EXPERIMENT IN MAKING TEMPORARY LIVING ENVIRONMENTS WHERE THE QUESTION ABOVE IS GIVEN SERIOUS PLAYFUL THOUGHTFUL DISCUSSION, AND TAKEN AS AN INPUT TO CREATIVE PROJECTS.

RATHER THAN ORIENTING PARTICIPANTS TO FIND A COMFY SPOT IN THE CURRENT SOCIAL SYSTEM, THIS SCHOOL OFFERS TOOLS, TIME, AMBIANCE AND COMPANY IN WHICH PEOPLE CAN IMAGINE AND DESIGN A SYSTEM THEY WOULD PREFER.

The School for Designing a Society is a project of teachers, performers, Artists, & Activists based in Urbana, Illinois. We have worked closely alongside Patch Adams & the Gesundheit Institute and on occasion host courses at their facilities in Hillsboro, WV.

Meet the Organizers & Presenters

Each session of the SDAS is unique. The content and dynamics are partially set beforehand by the organizers and partially determined by the desires of the current participants.

We offer regular classes in concepts drawn from music composition, systems theory, critical theory, and epic theater that we have found helpful in taking a design approach to social problems. SDAS sessions usually include design groups in which participants formulate desires in the form of false statements, under the title “My Desires: Right or Wrong”. The design groups discuss, combine, and revise these statements and take them as points of departure for creative group projects.

Guest presenters offer classes, talks, and guided field trips in various subject areas connected to the current projects. Often there is a large-scale project involving the entire school. Such projects have included performance tours, house theater, street theater, forest theater, children’s theater, public painting studio, hospital clowning, excursions to conferences, hosting our own conference, collaborative writing, creative demonstrations, urban permaculture.

Comments from Participants in SDAS

“I don’t think I’d still be working on the Gesundheit project had I not been a student of the School for Designing a Society.”

“Before I met the School for Designing a Society, I was clear that Gesundheit’s staff would be happy, funny, loving, cooperative and creative. There were many studies that confirmed these qualities as fundamental to being “healthy”. When I met the School, I added another quality: thoughtful. To my knowledge there are no studies showing the healing value of thinking—but there should be. Nor do I think there are many schools that foster a journey towards exercising one’s thinking as one would exercise one’s body—and there should be. School for Designing a Society is one such school.” -Patch Adams, MD

“The School for Designing a Society gave me two very important things. One, it gave me the chance to meet so many wonderful people who would prove to be so helpful and inspiring for many years to come, and two, a real notion of just how much we can actually do if we support each other in our creative desires and think out of the box to change the world. I am so thankful that my life has been what I set out for it to be: dedicated to social justice and full of wonderful adventure; and I can truly say that having the privilege to attend the School is what has made all the difference.” – Dr. Christine Carr, MD

Applying for SDAS Programs

The main criterion for acceptance into the program is a strong desire to participate in the project. All interested people are encouraged to apply. No particular educational background is required. The project of imagining a different, desirable society is helped by a diversity of backgrounds and range of ages among the participants.

All interested people are encouraged to apply. No particular educational background is required. The project of imagining a different, desirable society is helped by a diversity of backgrounds and range of ages among the participants. The main criterion for acceptance into the program is a strong desire to participate in the project.

The School for Designing a Society does not offer degree credit, but we have partnerships with other institutions that can offer academic credit for School for Designing a Society work. If you are currently enrolled in another school, we can help you research the possibility of getting independent study credit for your participation in SDaS.

If you are not a U.S. citizen and require a visa to attend an SDaS program, we can help with a formal letter of acceptance. Since SDaS is not a degree-granting institution the appropriate visa for attending would be a tourist visa. The visa process unfortunately is often expensive and uncertain, depending on a decision by the particular U.S. embassy in your country.

We are committed to not letting finances be a barrier to participation in the School for Designing a Society. Contact Us and we can work with you to find a plan that takes your circumstances into account.

Fill out the application form.
We will contact you for a phone or video interview so we can learn about your interests and answer questions about the program.
After the interview and upon acceptance, please pay your deposit on the session’s info page.
Pay your remaining tuition balance before the session payment deadline (typically 4 weeks before session starts)

For programs on the Gesundheit land in West Virginia, room and board are provided and are covered by the tuition fee. For programs in Urbana, Illinois, we encourage participants in the School for Designing a Society to find housing together. Champaign-Urbana, as a university town, has options for relatively inexpensive, convenient housing. We can assist in the search.

APPLY NOW

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There are no more than a handful of schools based on the desire for social change; this school proposes in addition, that social change be based on desires.

Why a School?

A school can provide the necessary initial chaos to encourage the generation of new thoughts. Anyone can learn anywhere at any time, and does; in a school, one is more likely to find someone who will teach.

Teaching is one of the few professions to which the sharing of power is indispensable. In a school people can meet with the shared purpose of questioning premises, questioning givens.

We create an intersection of the formats of classroom, collective, performance ensemble, and activist group.
We emphasize solidarity among participants so that co-creation, friction, conflict, and uncertainty can flourish peacefully in an atmosphere of fun and respect.
Each session of the SDAS is unique. The content and dynamics are partially determined by the desires of the current participants.

Upcoming Courses

Learning and creating together often also means living together, so that our thoughts about desirable ways of living can be immediate as well as far-reaching.

Current Offerings

Desire & Design

July 16-22 and July 23-29, 2023 | Hillsboro, WV

Join Patch Adams and the School for Designing a Society for 2 separate 1-week-long workshops! (attend either or both)

Construct Your Humanism

Week 1: Construct Your Humanism July 16-22, 2023, Hillsboro, WV

Inspired by environmental justice, abolition movements, water protectors, Black Lives Matter, community arts, LGBT solidarity, Braiding Sweetgrass, The Yes Men, Habrá Una Vez, Octavia Butler … and dismayed by how dehumanizing our institutions and systems can be, thwarting compassion and empathy … We invite you to a full week on the land in West Virginia to Construct Your Humanism. We’ll elicit from each other descriptions of the humanism we wish to see in the world. We’ll offer tools & strategize ways to put our humanism into practice. We’ll share meals, walks in the woods, excursions, stories, festivities; hear guest presenters; create poetry, performance, art, action plans, friendships.

>> Early bird payment–$800 before July 23; $1200 after July 23. Tuition includes room and board.

Learn Humanitarian Clowning

Week 2: Learn Humanitarian Clowning July 23-29, 2023, Hillsboro, WV

Patch and friends have brought clowns to war zones, refugee camps, nursing homes, hospitals, juvenile detention centers, maternity wards, schools, refugee centers, neighborhoods—following the motto: clowning is a trick to bring love close. We invite you to a week of exploring this idea of humanitarian clowning. Does it mean we need to create a character? or two? Lean tap dance? A few songs? Create skits? Devise costumes? Delve into the ridiculous? Surely cultivate curiosity & sensitivity … We’ll make clowning excursions to nearby places: nursing homes, VA hospitals, parks. We’ll be joined by various expert and inpert clowns passing through the neighborhood (to be announced!).

>> Early bird payment–$800 before July 23; $1200 after July 23. Tuition includes room and board.

Come to either of the two weeks, or both!

How to Apply?

Registration consists of 2 parts.
Application form: Please take a moment to fill out the application form. We will then contact you to arrange a phone interview. After the phone call, you will hear back from us concerning your acceptance in the program. I’m ready to apply.

Payment: After the interview and Upon your acceptance, we ask that you pay either the entire fee or non-refundable deposit online via secure PayPal account or with a check payable to School for Designing a Society. I’m ready to pay.

Have Questions? Need some Help? For more information contact Susan ⇒

Organizers & Guest Presenters

SDAS has regular guest presenters for their various courses and offerings.

Susan Parenti

Founder

One of the founders of School for Designing a Society and the Performers Workshop Ensemble. She has a doctorate in music composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of two influential position papers on health care design, a book of plays, a book of poetry, and a report of her project designing a feminist composition curriculum has been published in Perspectives of New Music.

Mark Enslin

Founder

One of the founders of the School for Designing a Society and the Performers Workshop Ensemble. His doctoral dissertation is Teaching Composition Facing the Power of the Respondent. His article “Listening and Unentitled” was published in Cybernetics and Human Knowing.

Patch Adams

Founder, Activist, Doctor

Health care activist who founded the Gesundheit Institute, a project to change health care and contributing to a more caring society by creating a free hospital based on fun and friendship and leading humanitarian clown missions to hospitals, orphanages, jails, nursing homes and refuge camps around the world.

Elizabeth Adams

Teacher, Organizer

Elizabeth Adams is a composer, teacher, and organizer, who works at the intersection of art, education, and social change. With Julie Harting, she co-produces Julie and Elizabeth’s Anti-Capitalist Concert Series. She has worked as a composer and performer with artists she deeply admires, all over North America and Europe. From 2006-2021 she organized with What A Neighborhood!, Free University NYC, and the Crown Heights Tenant Union. She has taught at Columbia University, and Baruch College; and since 2010 at the School for Designing a Society. Since 2017 she and Danielle Chynoweth have been at work on a book about social change, Democratize! How we make the world we want, which combines theory and exercises from the School for Designing a Society with case studies from their organizing experiences. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner, daughter, and mother.

Danielle Chynoweth

Artist, Advocate

A Social change artist, Danielle studied at New College Sarasota and the New School in New York, and was on the Urbana City Council for 7 years. Co-founder of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and organizer of grassroots campaigns for LGBTQ rights, youth empowerment, and against racial and economic inequality. A passionate advocate for romancing the public. She is currently Cunningham Township Supervisor and a single mom by choice.

Meadow Jones

Activist, Doctor

Dr. Meadow Jones received her PhD from the University of Illinois. Her dissertation “Archiving the Trauma Diaspora: Affective Artifacts in the Higher Education Arts Classroom” focused on the use of artistic and material practices in the redress of trauma. In combination with her experience as an Amherst Writers & Artists facilitator, she has adapted her research and created trauma responsive curriculum and workshops. She is a social practice artist, an award winning filmmaker and community organizer.

Early-Bird Registration for
Desire & Design

Save $400 if you sign up early for both Week 1 & 2 of the Desire & Design Course offered by The School for Designing a Society.

$1200 $800