Curriculum & Principles
VISION:
The School foundation is built upon a website and social media platform. It also exists purely as a framework for a vision of community building. The school is built upon a school store made in the model of a community market, co-op, and/or collective as both market and school. Every participant is a student and a teacher. The first and foundational class being each student teacher creates their own market “stall” or store with others and then the building of the communal market and making connections. The school is an exercise in community building that is in the business of helping small businesses, artists, healers, performers, ministers, etc.
A foundational principle is that as it is built, the creation is documented in shareable docs, notes, videos, etc. (on google). To make this process more fun, more communitarian, more networked the founding of the school website and social media presence is done collaboratively on ZOOM. At the SAME time as we plan, create, and document the school and school store itself, the founders ALSO create their own website and social media presence. Those websites are linked to the school website and create some shared content. This creates a symbiotic network effect for non-profits, small businesses, individual creatives, activists,
Foundational principles: *Giving Back to the community. Sales that happen through the School Store have A% of net profits go to the School or other community orgs. B% of net profits for creator-owner (subject to further subdivision for those involved in sales, marketing, shipping, etc). *H.O.T. (honest, open, transparent).
I envision the first iteration of this as a small “Class” of trusted and interested friends, with a Portland focus but open to some outsiders. We create the first version of this with the concept of “Each One Teach One.” Participants can use our experience and documented framework to teach the second iteration and that “Class” will make improvements to the framework and the foundational school. I envision early iterations of this Class as including people from all over the world. I know interested parties throughout the United States as well as in London, South Africa, and beyond.
The purpose of each having their own web site under their own control AND their own page in the group is so that at any point, when for any reason, folks feel the need to part ways, the student teacher can take their intellectual and creative property out of the collective with some agreements and mouse clicks and it is ALREADY in a “store” under their own primary control. This is intended as a good way to empower individuals and groups while maintaining blessed boundaries. It also knows that people will want to join and leave looking for the right lessons and the right fit. Everyone who leaves the collective of THIS LibSchool leaves empowered and with the blessing to create THEIR Liberation Schools as they see fit.
CLASSWORK-Departments-Schools-Collectives...
Market & Media Platforms: Shopify & Google majors, (wordpress, square, etc. minors). Regular day to day coursework is building, maintaining, and expanding school and store infrastructure. Anything someone makes for the school store they should also place in their own platforms.
Social & Sharing Platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Faenet, etc. Regular practice of promoting the School and ones own store. Classwork involves how to use apps to post at one or two places and have it shared everywhere.
Branding: What’s for the School, what’s for you, do they intersect? What font goes with my faerie name?
Promotion & Advertising: Free & paid, what’s smart, in the long run how can WE get the kind of traffic to help us get paid in ways that empower individuals and community. Running ads on google, facebook, and instagram will be essential to long term revenue growth for students and school.
Merchandise: Schwag, merch, POD (Print on Demand), t-shirts, mugs, prints. Basics of “HOW TO” design products. Art made by student teachers, even household items of community members is sold through the community store.. Foundational Principle: if someone in our community needs help selling shit, we have a class for that! We can help you learn how to turn things into money. Tuition for Liberation School Selling Stuff Class is X% of what you sell in the school store.
Media Creation & Broadcasting: photo editing, simple video, livecasting, documenting & archiving ancestor media in the form of pictures, relics, videos, etc. student teachers use their phones to create their own youtube channel for THEIR personal site. Classwork is on how to create content that benefits yourself and the school. LibSchool runs and manages its own YouTube Channel and collects advertising revenue. Content students share on the school website generates profit sharing for student teachers and LibSchool. Advanced Placement Adult Education Classes are run through the LibSchool’s x-Tube channels and Erotic Studies Department. Advertising revenue on xtube, or subscriptions, from shared erotic content could potentially be a lucrative revenue stream.
Fine Arts, Crafts, and Performance: Classes in peoples specialites, objets d’art and handcrafts for sale in the school store, performance, events, monthly fairs, extravaganzas, etc.
Accounting and Financial Management School: The Dean of this School is a paid position, compensation coming out of the general fund of money earned for the school. All classes are by Zoom. Since the LibSchool and it’s main store, along with student’s private stores, are all built on Shopify or similar platforms and everyone has been trained in appropriate Stock Keeping Unit use of SKU’s. Accounting and bookkeeping should be a breeze. Required classes are MY STORE REPORTING 101 and LibSchool REPORTING 101. In the first students learn how to generate their monthly store reports, interpret the results, and share that information with the school. In the second class students learn how the whole school generates those reports and how to interpret their own monthly school classwork, sales, incomes, etc.
Student teachers see how they are doing every month, how their fellow student teachers are doing, and how the school is doing. Strategies are designed to guide student teachers to building their own Majors and Minors. Classes are developed in Financial Management so that student teachers can manage their income flow. The school legal and financial structure is built to anticipate student teachers' diverse financial needs. Some may want to donate all their income back to the school. Some may need to build their own business through the school and get essential income through it. Coursework is developed to create diverse, creative, legal financial strategies that recognize and explore ways to compensate labor for the school community that is physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, etc. student teachers who have successful income streams through the school are set up to channel a portion of their income to the local Faerie Financial Commonwealth. The school also channels a portion of it’s income to the commonwealth.
Student Teacher UNION: In Union There Is Strength. This is of course the structure by which all major decisions are made for the Liberation School. Union works for founders, owners, shareholders, stakeholders, community members, those who are Faerie Liberation School adjacent, and all of creation. Union discusses and makes final decisions on financial compensation for Students, Teachers, and Staff.
Maybe we also get an actual building as a Liberation School Student Teacher Union. We had the Michigan Union as the center of it all back on campus in Ann Arbor.
Home Opportunities Maintenance Organization (RFHOMO): Student Teacher housing for the Liberation School and beyond. Designed to support a network of Radical Faerie Housing in Portland, at Wolf Creek, FaeBnB, coordinates with global faerie housing initiatives, owns and co-operates housing that is donated to or created for the community. Run by House Mothers, Stay at Home Daddies, Resident Advisors, etc.
Department of Recreation and Wellness: Fun stuff in parks (Eric Erdman I’m thinking of you!), fitness, meditation, nutrition, classes etc.
Education and Teaching: Regular classes for teachers on how to be better teachers, structure and promote classes, get paid, etc.
Social Work: Classes are framed on how to help each other, deal with conflict in classes, homes, gatherings, or other venues. An essential part of the wellness efforts.
“Swarm” as a foundational principle: At some point most collectives either get too big, too complicated, or end up with folks who have irreconcilable differences. In nature when a bee hive gets too big the queens don’t fight it out to the death and potentially destroy the hive. One queen takes some workers, a couple of drones, and swarms to form a new collective. Because each member of Liberation School is empowered to have their OWN personal web store or web presence from the very beginning, and knows how the whole operation operates, at any point anyone or any group of individuals can swarm from the school and do their own thing with the blessings and support of the Liberation School.