A Short Description of the Gumption Center

There are too few centers for the improvement of whole individuals in
social contexts, an area where widely influential experiments can be
explored.  The Gumption Center, as I am calling it, is to be such an
experiment, which will evolve from a Bed and Breakfast into an
alternative personal improvement and community center.  This is a
short outline of the idea and its goals.

As an improvement center, the Center is a combination of an
educational institution and holistic health club, offering an
ever-changing, eclectic assortment of seminars, workshops, and study
groups; resources for skill development, art, and hobby craft work;
and workout and exercise rooms and group activity areas.  In this
aspect, I draw on the concept of wellness, and the models of the
Experimental Study Group at MIT and Society for Creative Anachronism,
which support similar activities.  The foremost goal of the Gumption
Center is to motivate people to explore their interests and understand
each other better.  The primary benefits of the Center to its memebers
would be its facilities, support, and a community of like-minded
people essential to leading a life of improvement.

Example activities for the improvement center include workshops in
juggling, wood-carving, or writing; discussion groups about political
candidates, ethics, or social trends; seminars in modern and
experimental physical theory, the health, or Freud; talks by local
artists, scientists, and activists; and classes in yoga, massage, or
theater.  After their introduction through such organized activities,
participants would be encouraged to continue by working together and
organizing activities themselves.

Simultaneously and naturally, the Center acts as a local community
center, and has at its core a strong, democratic, and non-exclusionary
community built around these pursuits of learning and improvement.
The existence of a gathering place for this common pursuit acts both
to improve its effectiveness and develop its pervasive spirit.  The
institution would be based on a health club-like membership model to
support this community, where a monthly fee pays for general use and
support of the area, rather than patrons paying for individual
activities.  All members will be on equal footing in the governance
and decision-making of the Gumption Center, and given a voice for
customizing the institution to suit them.

By forming this institution in the space of a Bed and Breakfast, the
Center finds a strong financial base, space and attendance for
activities, coincidental and complementary practices, and one natural
fit into modern people's lives as a retreat.  The Peace Abbey, in
Sherborn, MA, has a similar system and atmosphere.  Such a Bed and
Breakfast can be purchased with a commercial mortgage, as a "turn-key"
operation-- that is, already outfitted for immediate use and expected
profit.

Although some of the Bed and Breakfast rooms will remain for visitors,
some would be converted into activity areas, and others many may
eventually be used as individual long-term residences, making the
Center something like a co-housing community, which would offer
personal spaces and privacy as well as the Center's regular facilities
and activities to improve life.

These additional features also help in supporting the Gumption
Center's underlying humanistic social goals.  Audre Lorde said, "It is
not our differences that divide us.  It is our inability to recognize,
accept, and celebrate those differences."  Our fear of difference
results in great suffering, death of culture, and the restriction of
individual potential; the primary goal of the Center is to cultivate
the acceptance of which Lorde speaks, both of people and abilities.
It is also meant to be a model for a potential future society,
intentionally combining many aspects of life and drawing on all kinds
of personal strengths.  In addition, in such an atmosphere, people
will naturally understand better all manner of political and social
issues and their own role in effecting change locally and globally.

The physical space would include a large "common area" allocated
roughly evenly to three purposes-- those optimized for "community",
those for the improvement of understanding and the mind, and those for
the improvement of skills and the body.  The community area would have
open spaces with couches, a kitchen, and a dining room.  The
"understanding" areas would be individual rooms with resources for
different pursuits, such as the sciences or humanities.  The "skill"
area would include a large wood-floored room with roll-out padding,
and a craft shop room.  All visitors and members would be welcome to
use the rooms, but a separate "members-only" area would be kept for
just the members and their guests.

In addition to the many uses for the space under the Gumption Center's
agenda, the space could be used as a place for home-schoolers to get
together, a summer camp drawing on many of the same activities that
would normally be going on, and a place for open-attendance
conferences.

I am in the process of writing up a more extensive proposal,
explaining more of the details and philosophy behind the idea.  The
most important thing for now, though, is to seek out interest, ideas,
and information.  You are probably reading this because I think you
might be intrigued, and I hope that with whatever help you are willing
to give, this dream can be made a reality.