School of the Alternative is an artist residency and collaborative learning space that holds an annual session in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

This month, we are raising $8,000 to make our next session possible.

SotA is a place where we can nurture our imaginations, where learning is reciprocal and knowledge is a shared resource. Nurturing such communities turns our eyes towards each other - and away from the systems that thrive on our disconnection.

SotA is more than an artist residency; it’s a living model of mutual care, shared knowledge, and creative liberation that offers a glimpse of what’s possible.

Your donation funds scholarships and operational costs and stipends for creative labor and the kind of radical experimentation and organizing that we need to creatively redirect the chaos around us towards the grounded, nurturing, and sustainable

With your support, in the spring of 2026, SotA's 9th session will host:

We have roles, but all of us teach; all of us cook and clean; all of us lead in a community that is imaginative, open, caring, and adaptive.

We need your help to sustain this radical, life-affirming space.