School
for
Poetic
Computation
What compels us to play within fictional worlds? How do we construct meaningful cultural, social, and natural environments to learn about our past, present, and future? ,Worlds In Conversation: Tabletop Storytelling Games, considers the theoretical and practical underpinnings of worldbuilding through the lens of tabletop role-playing games. Through a survey of existing work in the field, hands-on play, and independent and collaborative experimentation, this class offers an understanding of why–and how–we tell stories set in worlds other than our own.
This class may be for you if:
This class may NOT be for you if:
Everest Pipkin is a game developer, writer, and artist from central Texas who lives and works on a sheep farm in southern New Mexico. Their work both in the studio and in the garden follows themes of ecology, tool making, and collective care during collapse. When not at the computer in the heat of the day, you can find them in the hills spending time with their neighbors— both human and non-human.
they/them
· website
· twitter
· instagram
Caro Asercion is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of theatre, visual art, and analog games. Their design practice centers on expansive storytelling with an eye toward collaborative structure and form. As a theatre practitioner, Caro works as a dramaturg and artistic producer with a concentration in new works.
they/them
· website
· twitter
Weaver Walker is an outsider artist, philosopher, and storyteller. His work attempts to illuminate paths for the radical reinterpretations of knowledge, history, and complex symbolic systems wherever they might occur. He currently lives in Washington, DC where he is both a union and gay liberation organizer.
he/him
· website
Our programs are conducted in spoken English with audiovisual materials such as slides, code examples and video. Online programs are held over Zoom.
Please take care and be well. We hope you are comfortable in your housing, living, and working situation in general. Never hesitate to ask us for advice and reach out if you have accessibility requests or need any assistance during your time at SFPC. We will work closely with you towards co-creating the most accommodating learning environment for your needs.
What sort of worlds could be built out of this one, and why do we practice imagining them?
Applications open until Applications closed on April 15, 2024.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on . Please email us at admissions@sfpc.study with any questions you have.
For 10 classes, it costs $1200 + processing fees, for a one-time payment. We also offer payment plans. Participants can schedule weekly or monthly payments of the same amount. First and last payments must be made before the start and end of class. *Processing fees apply for each payment.
SFPC processes all payments via Withfriends and Stripe. Please email admissions@sfpc.study if these payment options don't work for you.
Upon payment, your space in the class will be reserved. We offer scholarships for those who cannot pay full tuition. Read more about scholarships below.
If you can’t pay full tuition, we really still want you to apply. Our application will ask you how much you can pay. We will offer subsidized positions in all of our classes, once each one has enough participants enrolled that we’re able to do so.
We have also started a scholarship fund, and we will be offering additional scholarships as community members redistribute their wealth through SFPC. We direct scholarship funds towards participants who are low-income, Black, Indigenous, racialized, gendered, disabled, Queer, trans, oppressed, historicially excluded and underrepresented.
Right now, tuition is SFPC’s main source of income, and that is a problem. It means that we can only pay teachers, pay for space, and organize programs when participants pay full tuition to attend. Tuition is a huge barrier to entry into the SFPC community, and it disproportionately limits Black participants, indigenous participants, queer and trans participants, and other people who are marginalized, from participating. Scholarships are not a long term solution for us, but in the short and medium term we hope to offer them more while we work towards transforming SFPC’s financial model.
For SFPC to be the kind of place the community has always meant it to be, it needs to become a platform for wealth redistribution. If you are a former participant, prospective participant, or friend of the school, and you have the financial privilege to do so, please donate generously. There is enough wealth in this community to make sure no one is ever rejected because of their inability to pay, and becoming that school will make SFPC the impactful, imaginative, transformative center of poetry and justice that we know it can be.
Interested in more learning opportunities at the School for Poetic Computation? Join our newsletter to stay up to date on future sessions and events, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Support our programming through scholarships. Get in touch over email.