Our Mission
The Gesundheit! Institute is a project in holistic medical care based on the belief that one cannot separate the health of the individual from the health of the family, the community, the world, and the health care system itself.
About Patch Adams
Patch Adams is best known for his work as a medical doctor and a clown, and he is also a social activist who has devoted 30 years to changing America's health care system. He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process.
About Gesundheit!
The institute began as a group of twenty friends, including three doctors, who moved into a six-bedroom home and called it a free hospital. The hospital was open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for all manner of medical problems from birth to death.
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Composing Community • Composing Music • Composing Activism
Composing Community
June 23-July 16, 2010 at the Gesundheit! Institute (Hillsboro, West Virginia)
When is community? What makes an intentional community intended? What would your ideal community look, sound, taste, smell, feel like?
Composing Community, a three-week design intensive and living lab at the Gesundheit! Institute, is an opportunity to explore alternative models of cooperation, leadership, decision making, labor distribution, and organizational structure. Gesundheit's philosophy will be a starting point; in the course of eating, working, studying together, participants will reflect upon their experiences and collaboratively design a new community model. In the second half, we will try out our designs as supporting hosts for the 10-day "Composing Music, Composing Activism" session.
$500 covers room, board, and tuition for this unique interweaving of education and volunteering. Students receive a tuition waiver to Music and Activism classes. Within their community design, students face the challenge of determining a desired way of participating in Music and Activism classes that does not conflict with completing work tasks.
For more information and to apply, send an email to tim at patchadams dot org.
Composing Music, Composing Activism
July 5-14, 2010 at the Gesundheit! Institute (Hillsboro, West Virginia)
Question: What could music and activism have in common? Answer: Composition. toot!
1. Composing Activism: We want to change the world, but are faced with the same tired out language and tactics. How can activism be an invention? A composition? Can art socially intervene? We will learn compositional concepts, and design activist interventions for the issues that participants bring to the workshop.
2. Composing Music: What is to become music now, that has not yet been? Which traces in sound, of which thoughts, of what contemporary relevance, toward what desired consequence? When, where, how, & with whom? We will learn compositional concepts to help formulate and try out answers to these questions, and hear how they interact with issues that participants bring to the workshop.
$1000 covers room, board, and tuition. Enrollment is limited to twenty students. For more information and to apply, fill out the contact form. Some partial scholarships available.
See the schedule