Sundown Schoolhouse opened Autumn 2006 in Los Angeles. It is a geodesic home-based educational environment with an activist mission. In the classic model of the schoolhouse, students of many ages {18 and up} come together to study a diversity of disciplines. It is a school for the gently radical design, literary, performing & visual arts. We foster models for active creative practices that engage with the messy realities of the world around us, from our relationships with the diverse peoples in our city to the eroding natural and urban environments we inhabit.

The students have a wide variety of backgrounds, skills and interests, but share an ambition to develop a responsive, engaged and innovative life in the arts. The schoolhouse teachers are artists, designers, educators, performers, scientists and thinkers from many backgrounds and disciplines. Some are part of a regular core of Los Angeles based teachers and others we catch as they pass through town. They bring to the schoolhouse that which they are most passionate about and interested in at the moment.

The annual schoolhouse schedule consists of a main fall session in Los Angeles. We convene for a full 12 hour day {from 8am until 8pm} one day a week for 12 weeks each season. Each day of the Schoolhouse begins with a non-verbal period of some form of physical activity such as yoga or dance and concludes that evening with happy hour open to friends and visitors. Each seasonal session has a loose topic or theme. On the last Sunday of each 12 week Schoolhouse session there is a public salon event organized, curated and presented by the students somewhere out in the city to present the fruits of the season.

--Fritz Haeg

www.fritzhaeg.com/schoolhouse.html

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{the} DOGS ATE {my} HOMEWORK
responses by Fall 2006 Sundown Schoolhouse students

In residence at the Schoolhouse are two thoughtful and eager DOGS:

Our classes are mostly held on the floor of a geodesic dome. We sit in a big circle and the dogs wander around. As we discuss institutional authority or do movement exercises or write a list of our 10 favorite words the dogs pay visits to each of us looking for some attention. There is something healthy about having a few bodies roaming the room that have a different agenda.

The dogs love visiting speakers. Attentive and adoring, they remind me of someone I once knew. The dogs come around when meals are made. Not quite lost in the chaos of the kitchen. Hoping to catch a fallen crumb, they usually succeed. The dogs are sure to be found dancing in the garden. They never miss a scavenger hunt or a heated game of hide and seek. The dogs are wise beyond their years. They can tell you if the tomatoes are ripe. They can queue the tape and dim the lights. They believe in consensus and naptime. Gracious hosts, they are quite the welcome wagon. But the dogs will never be caught dead with homework nor will I. {Tracy Dishman}

 

 

They once escaped--the dogs--out of the fence and onto the street. We were modern dancing (but not really "dancing" because, as Hana explained, "dancing" means something else and what we were doing was "movement") out in the pathways of the garden and around the large table underneath the huge trees. We were moving and focusing on moving--and that each time we moved we were "totally changing the space." We were asked to move from within, not what our body should do, but what it could do and to move freely, and we had an audience and the role of the audience was just as important as the role of the performer and we all just kind of wiggled and stretched and Alia even climbed one of the trees. Katie rolled on the ground, through the bruised fruit, Michael squiggled like spaghetti and laughed, giddy, Pablo scratched his chin and balanced on one foot and the dogs, well the dogs just snuck underneath the fence and escaped right out from under us and we did not know if they had been paying attention to the directions or not. {Devin Brown}

I don't particularly like dogs. They make me uncomfortable because they need so much attention. It must be really hard to be that needy. It makes me feel sorry for them. Which kind of makes me like them. Okay I actually really like dogs. {Alia Raza}
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Any discussion of the Sundown Schoolhouse must include some talk of what we ATE:
We take turns visiting the farmers market each week. We gather locally grown ingredients to prepare all of our meals for the group each week. The ideas discussed in "class" flow easily without division into the kitchen as everyone gathers to prepare the meal, eat and then clean up.

At The Sundown Schoolhouse, eating was a delight. I think most of the tidbits I gleaned from the experience dealt with food and different ways of preparing my daily rations. I often think that the schoolhouse should turn into a cooking school. There was something quite attractive about a bunch of creative types in a room with a bunch of good foodstuffs and a lot of time and energy. Food and eating brought everybody together and eventually created a family dynamic amongst the students. Everyone performed chores whether it was preparing, cooking, or cleaning up afterwards. Eating put us in close proximity to each other, and forced positive confrontation. If there weren't food we would probably be too busy thinking. {Mark Rodriguez}

I love eating. It’s one of life's greatest pleasures. I get excited just thinking about it. But then I overindulge. I don't have a lot of discipline when it comes to food. Sometimes it actually makes me feel sick. I think I kind of hate eating. {Alia Raza}

The way we ate, cooked and shopped during Sundown Sundown informs my eating, cooking and shopping habits today. I tasted my first guava and cherimoya at Sundown. I learned that farmers will take the time to tell you what fruits are in season if you just take the time to ask. And now I only buy California wine after realizing it's delicious, cheap, and most importantly, local. Eating impromptu melon breakfasts on the balcony, eating every lunch in the yard, having everyone shell beans while wrapping up a discussion, getting offers of hot green tea with honey at least three times a class, getting to know where everything was in the kitchen, feeling lightheaded from lack of sugar and carbs. {Sarah Cole}

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The schoolhouse has no HOMEWORK:
Since we are already at "home" during school, the notion of "homework" becomes irrelevant. The idea that one learns a school and then goes home to work is obsolete. These strict divisions of activities limit our thinking about what can happen where...

To weave in a complete day from morning until night as a method of learning is sought and can be and should be taken to any aspect of learning. At the center of learning is exploration and risk taking. By exercising, by preparing and eating, by getting tired, by constant conversing, by contemplation we are geared towards an intimate intellectual pursuit where the goal is a question rather than an answer. {Michael Parker}

 

 

I refuse to do homework. I don't believe in it. I know learning can and should take many forms and not be exclusive to the classroom but really, I think doing lots of homework is too much to expect of someone. Life is short. People need to have fun. Though what's fun for one is different for another. For me, one fun thing is writing. about stuff I’ve experienced, about myself. So. I guess right now, voluntarily, I’m doing homework. {Alia Raza}

Homework is an extension of school practice in the lives of students. Since school is an educational institution, homework as well has the purpose to educate and to make students learn outside of school context. We didn't use to have homework at the Sundown Schoolhouse, but I never learned as much from my non-school time as when I attended the Schoolhouse. I lived in Los Angeles for four months (my home country is France) to attend the Schoolhouse, and discovered an incredible number of things during my everyday life. I lived in a new city, a new country, a new culture, and every single minute was about learning something. In a many ways those everyday discoveries were feeding my thoughts and conversations at the schoolhouse. We had no homework, but there definitely were connections between school time and non-school time. {Pablo Cavero}
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