What if The Bauhaus existed today?
When it was established in 1919, the Bauhaus school took a revolutionary stance on education: envisioning the interconnectedness of art and design. Its founders aspired to develop a curriculum that would attract a utopian community of creators – artisans who would create objects that blended beautiful form with utilitarian function.
While many of the founders’ philosophies endure today, we believe that the Bauhaus likely would have evolved to consider and include in its definition of good design the impact on people, planet, and spirit. It is likely that the powerful, innovative curriculum from its original beginnings would have transformed to serve and support its students to create, design, and build a new Earth – one that is in support of people, planet, spirit – one that includes wellness, is regenerative, and is led by our heart-intelligence and consciousness in balance with our intellect.
Enter Imagine The Next Institute: the New Bauhaus. We have expanded the understanding of good design to include these questions, in addition to respecting the power of beauty and the mantra of form follows function:
Does it uplift the human spirit?
Does it consider its impact on people-planet-spirit, thereby putting us in equal step and unity with the five senses, the five elements, and the animal kingdom, plant kingdom, and mineral kingdom?
Does it contribute to our unified overall highest good and wellness in mind, body, and spirit?
Does it cultivate and encourage a diverse community and ecosystem, and does it serve to regenerate our local, global, universal community?
Does it respect and encourage our divine intelligence, our source, and our oneness?
We are in the midst of a leap in evolution on our planet. Our consciousness is expanding, which means our creativity and imaginations are expanding too. We need a place to teach and mentor limitless students and light workers, who are here to build a new Earth that will reflect this leap in evolution. Imagine The Next Institute aims to do just this.
Welcome to the New Bauhaus: Imagine The Next Institute is the heart, mind, and soul of a new way of becoming the change we want to see in our world!
Black Mountain School
An image by Josef Albers of John R. P. French Jr.’s psychology class on the deck of Black Mountain College’s Studies Building, circa 1941-42.
Credit...
© 2022 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
When the Bauhaus was forced to close by Nazi Germany, it relocated and reorganized in Black Mountain, North Carolina – just minutes from where our founder, Janine James, attended college.
Since learning of the Black Mountain School of Design in college, James has been completely fascinated and inspired by how hugely productive creatives can be while living in community, and by integrating their creativity with mind and body at an emotional and spiritual level. James has dreams of evolving and furthering this principle of studying and creating in community outside of conventional systems of art and design and other ineffective educational systems.
Many artists and designers from the Black Mountain School became an important influence in James’ creative work. She went on to collaborate with the choreographer Merce Cunningham, a former Black Mountain School teacher, on creating an original choreographed dance for a site-specific piece designed by James for American Express in New York City.
Now, James is living her dream in shaping Imagine the Next Institute; a place to become the change we want to see in the world.