The Evergreen State College is a peculiar school. In a gorgeous physical environment where everything is either a tree or not a tree, and the sun comes out just in time to set, the academic environment is primarily interdisciplinary. Not interdisciplinary as a fringe alternative—it’s the main approach. They’re on a quarter system, and each quarter most students enroll in a single course referred to as a “program” taught collaboratively by at least two professors from different fields—geology and sculpture, music and mathematics, poli sci and forestry. Thus when Arun Chandra facilitated the invitation of Susan Parenti, Rob Scott, Danielle Chynoweth and me for a 10-week group residency as Evans Scholars, we expected to make a seamless translation of a School for Designing a Society session into a Evergreen program. As it turned out, we collaborated on a quilt that was all seams.

The program was titled Social Change: Desire, Design and Composition, a Freshman course that was designed to include: introduction of terms and concepts of composition, design, change, society, language critique, performance; groups meeting to formulate and focus on several large-scale social problems; groups meeting to elicit statements of desire for social change; groups to collaborate on the composition of a mid-quarter medium-switching performance; groups to design social interventions encountering several social problem areas; an international conference on health care system design—and groups creating performances to present at the conference. In addition, the heuristics of the class were framed by a performance of music and theater by the Illinois entourage the first week and a performance potluck by Evergreen students (including a production of Kenneth Gaburo’s Maledetto) the final week.

The design groups—in the areas of Care, Participation, Environment and Education—produced 2 booklets: “Participation Patterns” and “Unheard-of Schools and Other Educational Kinks”; a set of satiric and tragic performances on concepts of waste; and formulations and metaphorical bandages addressing the need for care. For a substantial number of students, the presentation of their pieces in the context of the health care conference, which was attended by doctors, nurses, naturopathy students, health care activists acutely aware of systemic problems of health care delivery, contributed to 3-day Aha! moment where the sense that performance, desire, formulation could nudge in the direction of solving the not-yet-solved became palpable.