Peritia School of Self-sufficiency and Arts

Peritia School of Self-sufficiency and Arts is a non-profit informal school of self-sufficiency skills and arts, located in rural NSW, where participants live, learn, and teach. At the time of this writing, the project is in its conceptual stage, registering as a non-profit and working on content for its website.

General notions

The school will commit to two years training for a contribution fee of AU$10,000 for a 2-year term. The contribution fee is not refundable, but transferrable, and will be spent entirely for the purpose of covering for the costs of the courses, housing, materials, tools and food (i.e. non-profit). The school will begin operating shortly after there are at least 200 committed participants, and will aim for 200-250 participants for a 2-year term. The school will continue to operate for as long as there's sufficient participation, and in the event of closure, proceeds from sales of land and goods will be refunded to current participants evenly and proportional to unfulfilled term, and any excess donated to charity.

Informal school

Peritia does not provide any formal qualifications, and its courses are not directed by any qualified practitioners. The courses have a format that is coordinated and overseen by a team of course coordinators, and are designed for maximum safety and quality within the budget constraints. All courses are provided by the participants themselves, and it is mandatory that any participant provides active training in an area of their choice, at least two hours of duration and at least every second day, with the rest of the time spent resting, upskilling for their own course, taking other courses, or participating in communal general maintenance tasks. The purpose in every course is personal mastery, sharing knowledge, supporting others in their efforts to acquire skills, and collaborating with other trainers to deliver multiple benefits per course

Self-sufficiency

Courses related to self-sufficiency (sustainable living) include:

• Growing food
• Promoting health (physical, emotional, interpersonal)
• Building and furniture construction and woodworking
• Clothing and fabric making (sewing, building and operating looms, creating fibres)
• Gardening
• Electric - 12V (e.g. lighting, motors)
• Chemistry (e.g. food, cleaning products, combustibles)
• Mining and recycling
• Metalsmith and toolmaking
• Engine and automotive mechanics

Arts

Courses related to arts include:

• Visual arts (e.g. painting, sculpture, printing, photography, 3D modelling and animation)
• Performing arts (e.g. theatre, film, juggling, circus)
• Literature (e.g. fiction, journalism)
• Music (e.g. composing, playing instruments, crafting instruments, mixing)
• Physical/spiritual and martial arts (e.g. kung fu, tai-chi, yoga)
• Health related (e.g. nutrition, massage, psychotherapy)
• Crafts (e.g. ceramics, woodworks, glassmaking)
• Cooking and food preparation

Multidisciplinary courses

The design of each course will aim at developing multiple skills and training simultaneously, and encourage taking other beneficial and related courses. For example:

• Some farming courses (such as permaculture) will be co-designed with:
  • fitness trainers, to exercise specific groups of muscles in a safe and effective manner while developing farming skills
  • nutritionists, to understand the relationship between farming effort and nutritional output
  • related courses such as woodworks and metalsmith provide training in crafting some the farming equipment used, or chemistry, for manufacturing fertilisers
• Some sustainable building courses will be co-designed with:
  • fitness trainers, to exercise specific groups of muscles in a safe and effective manner while developing sustainable building skills
  • crafts and visual arts trainers, to ensure everything built is also beautiful and artistic
  • related courses such as open source hardware and construction kits, chemistry, and mechanics, to understand construction equipment and construction material properties
• chemistry courses will be co-designed with:
  • farming trainers, to produce fertilisers, to learn to test and monitor soil conditions and characteristics, and use farming output as raw materials for a diverse range of essentials
  • food production trainers, to learn to produce yeast and algae, and process produce into ingredients such as starch and essences
  • woodworking and mining courses, to learn to process wood and ore
  • related courses such as glassmaking and metalsmith, to learn to produce equipment used
• energy production courses will be co-designed with:
  • woodwork and metalsmith trainers, to ensure the ability for self-sufficiency is maximised
  • construction trainers, to ensure that the techniques for building supporting structures is also applicable to housing and furniture making
  • related courses such as mechanics, to understand the correlation and conversion between energy and kinetics (motion), and chemistry to understand how energy is stored in batteries

Communal and sustainable living

During participation in the courses, the participants are invited and encouraged stay in the premises. The length of the stay will be defined by NSW housing regulations and at the time of this writing is not well defined, but will aim for allowing participants to stay during most of their paid term. During their stay, participants will:

• learn a variety of the kind of skills that will make a difference, especially around areas of sustainable living and art
• train freely and at their own pace, with individualised courses adjusted for personal skills, difficulties, and interests
• co-habitate with like-minded individuals, in an environment that will promote long-lasting friendships
• be nourished by fresh and abundant organic food
• live in an unpolluted environment, designed for maximum sustainability and aimed at overall zero or negative environmental degradation
• experience a lifestyle absent of trading, employment, consumerism, civic duties, monitoring by authorities, privilege, etc.
• gifting the world by advancing open source software and hardware projects, and producing creative commons artworks

School values and Terms and Conditions

The school is open for anyone residing legally in Australia, pays for the fees, and agrees to the school's Terms & Conditions. The school has values and principles that are unique and may not sit well with an applicant. It is therefore essential for applicants to understand what the school stands for, and agree to comply with the terms. The school doesn't require applicants to agree wholeheartedly with its principles and values, but it does require applicants to understand them and be willing to play well with these, and with the other participants. One of the principles of the school is workability, and this is something every participant must strive for in relation to their integration to the school and the community of participants.

Resource-based Economic Model

Peritia seeks to function under a local, Minimalist Resource-based Economy (MRBE), which is a minimalist version of the Resource-based Economic Model (RBEM). The RBEM is defined as a holistic socioeconomic system with the following goals:

• Use of intelligent management of resources (rather than politics and opinion-based decision making)
• Promote peace through collaboration (rather than competition) and prioritising the satisfaction of everyone's needs (rather than targeting wants and desires)
• Promote social equality through transcending privilege, a need for property/ownership, and towards universal access
• Sustainability through focus on the four domains of Health: individual, interpersonal, social, and environmental, as understood by science (fitness and nutrition, psychology, sociology, and biology and ecology)

As a holistic socioeconomic system, RBEM is concerned with any decision-making that impacts the whole community, such as the allocation of shared resources, and the design and implementation of policies that maintain workability and fairness throughout the community. The Minimalist version is a low-tech, self-funded, hands-on and common-sense approach to the ideal RBEM, that can be implemented on new small-to-medium communities on a low-budget. The following are some key-points of MRBE:

• No trade of goods and services, and no paid work: money serves no purpose within the community
• No contractual obligations: all agreements are by word, and non-binding
• Ownership is limited to personal items
• Community work is performed on a voluntary basis, out of a sense of social responsibility and willingness to be of service
• Decisions involving shared resources are, whenever possible, made via a combination of
  • sociocracy: democracy is direct, and extend exclusively to areas of direct involvement or where being directly impacted by
  • intelligent management: solutions are weighed and compared for performance in RBEM's principles (sustainability, fairness, health, etc) and the community's defined goals (e.g. maximise art production)
  • scientific and empirical: costs, benefits and predictions are derived from real-world measurements and the application of scientific principles (rather than opinion, preferences, tradition, and cultural values)

Hacker ethic

The hacker ethic is a term for the moral values and philosophy commonly shared among contributors to open source software and hardware. The key points within this ethic are access, freedom of information, and improvement to quality of life.

Peritia school aligns with the hacker ethic, and is not only not for profit, but tries to ensure that the school will assist with and advance open-source software and hardware projects, such as GNU/Linux, Wordpress, MediaWiki/Wikipedia, Open Source Ecology, RepRap, WikiHouse, etc. It is a requirement that all artworks produced within the school be shared with a Creative Commons license, and that similar works are privileged for consumption (i.e. using open source software rather than proprietary software in the school's administration, computer courses, etc; and consuming Creative Commons or other types of Public license artworks such as films, music/scores, literature/plays, etc).

Ecumenic approach to religious beliefs

While the school itself is areligious, it welcomes the exercise of any religious beliefs, provided they accept the following statements and agree to abide these values:

• The belief in any religious truth, value, or point of view, is personal and intended for personal observance, and is no indication to what is right, correct, outside of the personal realm
• There can be only one site of worship in the school, and it shall be pluralistic and non-denominational
• Religious expressions must strive for acknowledging commonalities, rather than focusing on differences