Community study for
the freedom of attention
"A space to reorient, rupture and reclaim how we encountered the happening around us and within us... This gives me hope for our future as a species.”
"What a gift: thoughtfully run, super interesting, and grounded in diverse intellectual traditions… You're learning about the most pressing issue of our generation."
“I think something magical happened… To me, this is a reminder of ways of connecting to the world, to being a conscious member of the world."
Why Attention?
Radical attention is the root of a shared world. Through it, we form our very selves, build community and care for the planet that sustains us. This faculty, which is at the heart of education, art and politics, is immeasurably precious.
It is also being stolen from us. Digital platforms, eye-tracking technologies and extractive market structures known as the "Attention Economy" seek to capture every second of our waking gaze. In doing so, they convert our eyeballs into dollar signs, and yield enormous profits at our expense.
This poses a grave threat. Our ability to care for ourselves, others, and the Earth itself – all this hinges, ultimately, on our ability to choose where, and how, we direct our attention. To do so, we must understand what attention is, and might be; what it is good for and how we might use it for good, together.
This is the work of The Matthew Strother School of Radical Attention, a non-profit institution of education and collaboration dedicated to cultivating radical attention as a foundation of human well-being — and well-being beyond the human, too. Through creative projects, courses on the history, philosophy, and politics of attention, and experiential Attention Lab workshops, we fashion and collectively implement tools to reclaim radical attention, and thereby protect and cultivate the many goods of shared life that it creates.
We pursue change in three ways…
Coalition-building with communities who see the need to resist the theft of human attention.
Learning about attention and attention capture through group study and shared practice.
Cultivating spaces (physical, virtual, fixed, mobile) that provide shelter and nourishment for attentional resources.
…with programs combining study and practice
Through our reading- and discussion-based Seminar Courses, we seek a deepened theoretical, historical and political understanding of the role of attention in human life. Each course culminates in a free and public Attention Lab workshop, where students and teacher-facilitators are invited to share emerging strategies for collective thought and action in our changing attention ecology.
Seminar Courses
Our courses —which are co-taught by university professors, teachers, and artists — are not simply about attention. Rather, they see attention as the door through which we can most deeply engage the Big Questions at the heart of humanistic inquiry: Who are we? What constitutes our reality? What is truth, and beauty? How might we most fruitfully live together? What is the role of art and language in advancing this task? What is a better world, and how might we build it?
Attention Labs
Our free, experiential, community-centered workshops are dedicated to the exploration of radical human attention. These gatherings draw on deep and various traditions of attentional communities. Through group practices of attention and guided discussions, we create and test tools to build sanctuaries of attention — as well as networks of solidarity to sustain them. We’ve held our workshops for hundreds of participants internationally in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Sidewalk Study
SIDEWALK STUDY is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space. After a close reading of a key text, participants move through the city to a second destination — and perform a Practice of Attention en route. This Practice is designed to animate theoretical questions in the text. Upon arriving at the destination, students synthesize their experience of the previous two phases (theory, practice) in an open-ended discussion. Graduates of our Labs and courses are eligible to join.
Upcoming Events
