Forever Moving Towards Radical Accessibility

We are asking for your help to continually support the growth of this radical Programming. School of the Alternative is a radical-art-school-meets-artist-residency, and we build and sustain a community of collaborative learning on the original campus of Black Mountain College for a multi-week session every May.

SotA prioritizes being equitable and safe(r) for those most marginalized in institutional learning spaces. We need your help to support our sustainable and steady growth as a part of our continued journey toward Radical Accessibility.

This year we are raising $3,000 - we want to shine a light on the areas that need the most attention right now: scholarships, and payments for faculty and staff for our 2023 session. For us, these are the most important priorities toward our next step into radical accessibility right now.

$2,000 will go towards additional scholarships. This means:

• 5-8 additional scholarships

• Including continued Black Equity Scholarships

Last session, 40% of our students attended on scholarship - but we know that tuition is still a big barrier to entry. We aim to continue to steadily grow our scholarship offerings, with the eventual goal of sliding scale tuition for ALL (or making SotA free for all: BIG long-term dream!).

The remaining $1,000 will go towards increasing our payments for faculty and staff.

• This will increase staff and faculty payments to $200/wk.

To keep tuition as low as possible, our tuition only covers our most basic needs like food, lodging, and basic admin fees (website, PO Box, etc.). This meant that for our first 3 sessions, all faculty and staff were volunteers. Our working board members and other year-round facilitators are all still volunteers. We know this isn't sustainable, and limits access for so many. With fundraising efforts, we have slowlyyy started to build our faculty and staff payments, bit by bit! We know that, without raising tuition (which we aren't doing! Don't worry!), it's going to take time to get to a place where our payments are equitable in the way that we want them to be. But, if we raise a little more each year, we'll get there!

If you've attended our sessions, you know that SotA has a ripple effect. By supporting this campaign, you are not only supporting our next in-person session, you're supporting the extension of our radical community into the communities of the people who attend. SotA creates an environment where folks produce tools and experience shifts in thinking: radical optimism, how to create and sustain an equitable and caring community, and sharing knowledge without expectation or traditional hierarchies. We've seen these values extend beyond our session and into the lives and communities of the dreamers who attend, creating waves well beyond our time together. 

We are so appreciative of your help getting us to our 3k goal! Any additional $$ raised beyond the goal will simply add more to our scholarship and payment funds. We appreciate you donating, and we appreciate you SHARING this campaign! Help us make our radical dreams come true?