Peritia school

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.

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