University of Sussex

February 19th 2007

Dear John,

Now I have visited the Aegean Center a number of times, both at Paros and  Pistoia, I feel I am able  to begin to tell you why I so deeply respect your  educational initiative.

What I most admire is the absolute commitment to the whole person. As soon as your students arrive, they are put in touch with some great art work - architecture, painting, sculpture, murals, music - but, at the very same moment, they are given a journal in which to make notes, to scribble, sketch, keep in touch with themselves. This combination, it seems to me, captures exactly the heart-rhythm of all true learning. There’s a great challenge from without - yes, of course - but there’s also the opportunity to grow alongside what is being experienced. The students assimilate at their own pace and according to their personalities. That is marvellous!

I am impressed, too, by the apprenticeship model which informs the teaching of the major arts. Your students are not left to their own devises and ordered to be stunningly original; rather, they are invited to work alongside experienced practitioners. In this way they become aware of a tradition - a series of exemplars, a body of techniques, a particular discipline of working - and it is within this tradition they are asked to create, to explore, yes, even to experiment. And that, again, seems absolutely right - for in nearly all human activities a language has to be assimilated before it can be put to agile use. In this way your students become part of a coherent culture - a culture where making and appreciating, where being innovative and being part of a vital symbolic order, are seen as mutually enhancing, complementary aspects of the one creative energy.

And I love the way all this rich learning takes place against the constant background of the Renaissance and the classical world. Almost without thinking - just by virtue of being in the place - your students’ horizons are dramatically expanded and their sense of historic connection radically deepened. Because they are in superlative cultural locations - both in Italy and Greece - they all but breathe it in! Shall we call this learning the power of subliminal transformation? I am sure it works like that - being close to what is beautiful imperceptibly changes us.

This must be true of your students being on that island too. I am assuming here that this will be the first time that many of them will have experienced such elemental forces as, say, silence at night or the variegated beauty of wild plants. By living at Paros they become, as it were, sensitive ecologists, aware of their place in Nature and, perhaps, they become alarmed by the bleak prospects we all now face because of our general disconnection and sad alienation. Here, I am becoming aware of the increasing importance of the ecological dimension in your work at the Center, your many walks across the island with the students: a necessary re- connecting not only with historic culture, but also with the threatened biosphere. That seems so urgent now... so in keeping with the real needs of our age.

Finally, a word about the distinctive ethos of the Center. It strikes me as informal, convivial, based on care and respect, on the importance of spending time together, simply to talk and listen. Your communal evening meals in Pistoia will remain with me always. As you know, in Ancient Greek they used the word paideia to refer to the education of the whole person inside a community of care. For me this is exactly what the Center represents for our own confused time.

Certainly, the Center is an inspiring preparation for whatever may subsequently follow in the lives of your students, but what it offers is also, as the ancient Greek philosophers knew, a supreme value in and for itself.

I wish this great experiment in learning and connecting, well.

Peter Abbs

Research Professor of Creative Writing

University of Sussex