Spring Academy 2017
The Spring Academy idea was born in 2015 out of research into educational reform in Greece and any other country where educational choice is limited. This research was, and continues to be, in collaboration with educational reform experts and organisations from all over the world.
From 2017 until 2019 the Spring Academy operated as a temporary learning community in Corfu, Greece.
From the very beginning our aim was its evolution into a prototype educational structure with actual and digital localities without borders.
These are the roots of that evolution.
Freedom, sovereignty, self-determination, self-management, cooperation, solidarity, companionship, empowerment, democracy …
Big, beautiful, important words …
To what extent are they our experience? To what extent if you’re under 18 and to what if you are over?
To what extent is our collective memory open to the right to self-organization, especially when what is offered violates our freedom of conscience? A much forgotten right and duty towards ourselves, our children, grandchildren, grandfathers and our great-grandmothers…
We invite you to an open, cross-age and interdisciplinary community to taste the right to self-determinationin a wide range of life issues.
We implement democratic assembly without age discrimination based on horizontal self-management and assuring the inviolability of freedom of conscience. We use various communication and decision-making techniques and old methods from different cultures.
We propose co-action beyond dividing lines; cultural, academic, geographical, social, age, physical and mental for the promotion of everyone’s right to”… develop their personality freely in all aspects that compose it.” (Article 5 paragraph 1 of the Greek Constitution)
We wish for international cooperation with academics, artists, teachers, writers, scientists, midwives and birth assistants, children and young people, activists, acrobats, foundations, research centers, schools, institutes, laboratories, theaters, collectives, therapy programs etc.
The Academy is suitable for people of any age and nationality and we would be very happy to have people and families who follow ‘alternative’ lifestyles with us: nomads, worldschoolers, unschoolers, homeschoolers and other approaches.
We promote the art of well being beyond social requirements of success not giving ready answers but tools to look for answers allowing discovery driven by curiosity, creativity and imagination. Allowing understanding to explode and drive inspiration.
We consider it wise to approach these issues holistically.
Α 5-day Spring Academy, a non-profit meeting with the following primary purposes:
• to experience the theory of freedom of conscience, horizontal management with complete integration of minors in all processes and open sharing of knowledge and skills.
• for people and organizations that are usually dispersed and/or separated to coexist and cooperate
• the establishment and operation of structures, accessible to all social and economic groups, to promote and protect the right to choose, to differ and tοself-direct for all ages.
Τhe Academy aims to support evolution in the fields of education and vocational training, health, artistic and scientific activity and research, housing and mobility, energy and food production, innovative economic and social organization, the protection of the natural and urban environment.
The Academy takes place at Casa Lucia.
Since 1980 Casa Lucia supports and accommodates alternative educational, artistic and therapeutic programs for all ages, permanent and stable, temporary and mobile, making it a living example of implementation of the Academy’s objectives.
We invite individuals and collectives from Greece and abroad to help shape the structure of the Academy.
We encourage all ages to act as facilitators and in various languages cultivating multilingualism.
The program gradually evolves as proposals are made and continues to evolve during the Academy through daily assemblies.
Assemblies are used as a key tool for organization during and before the Academy.