"Experiential learning has powerful fixes in the conscious as well as the unconscious. Roaming the neighborhood used to be a schooling of its own. The demise of the neighborhood and rising oppressiveness of the culture with regards to letting kids wander as they use to, has all but abolished the constructive aspects of schooling. That also goes for the experiencing of nature, now to the priviledged and packaged for all of us.
What Soleri termed the "Urban Effect" is really about the breaking down of physical, social and cultural barriers...(Paolo Soleri Arcosanti: An Urban Laboratory? 1987 P.61)" We learn best through combining our learning processes with participation in the everyday, real-world activities associated with the construction and running of a human habitat and the various "life support systems" that are necessary to the continued existence of this project - the techniques and methods of sustaining the community.
Arcosanti Workshop Program
During the birth of the Arcosanti project, a five week long workshop program was initiated, so that students from around the world who were interested in, and inspired by, Soleri's vision could come to Arcosanti to help build "the world's first prototype Arcology." The first week is a seminar week where workshoppers get an overview of the site and the history of Arcosanti. During the seminar week workshoppers have an opportunity to engage discussion with Soleri about his book Arcosanti: An Urban Laboratory.
Workshoppers also become familiar with the surrounding desert ecosystem. At the end of the first week, workshoppers are asked what departments they would like to work in for the remainder of their stay. In order to live at Arcosanti as a resident, one must have completed the 5 week workshop program. Many come to participate in the Arcosanti workshop program
seeking refuge from the mainstream society desiring a place to soak up alternative ideas, while also seeking to expand upon those ideas in our own unique way, during or after college and/or as part of a transition in their lives.
Another important component of our learning experience is the observation of human (group and individual) behavior within this intense "urban" environment. Many come to Arcosanti from suburban environments where intact whole communities are quite intact while others have lived their lives in suburban or rural American styled where corporate and commercial culture values have become the prevailing cultural force. The term we often use is Arconauts because in a way it is like being a traveler to a special place that is unlike anything else in the world. Those of us who come to Arcosanti and share the space and the time together are participating in a unique experience together. For many it is a time to consider alternative worlds and scenarios for humanity's fiuture.