Always Learning Education | Application Preview
Always Learning Education (ALE) is seeking government grants to expand their common arts courses, which teach essential skills for self-sufficiency, such as food production, livestock management, navigation, construction, and trade. Despite COVID-19 restrictions, interest in these courses has surged, demonstrating a rising demand for skills that are not solely academic but vital for practical living.
The business plan includes broadening the course offerings following the release of their book, "Common Arts Education," published in February 2021. This expansion will encompass consulting services for individuals, families, and schools, along with both online and in-person course options that adhere to health guidelines.
ALE argues that funding approval is warranted due to the heightened interest in self-reliance sparked by the pandemic. These courses, once considered electives, are now viewed as essential for education, pairing practical skills with academic knowledge. They emphasize learning in context, enriching students' experiences by combining theory with hands-on practice.
Currently, ALE faces little competition in this niche, apart from certain local schools. Their competitive advantage lies in providing a comprehensive range of common arts instruction under one program, attracting skilled instructors who can collaborate and share their expertise, which fosters a richer learning environment for students.
-
General Information
Business Registration Number: 82-1555334
Location: Columbia, VA, United States
Length of Operation: 4
Number of Employees:
Annual Gross Income:
Annual Gross Expense:
Open to Loans: NO
-
Funding Usage
Covering the cost of common arts course expansion, scaling according to demands and limitations imposed by COVID restrictions. Common arts courses are designed to increase individual and family abilities to raise food and livestock,navigate, build with wood/stone/leather, and trade. Demand has been high, even with COVID restrictions, with which we are complying carefully. Additional funding would allow ALE to expand online course offerings, as well as offer in-person, COVID-compliant instruction for the foreseeable future.
-
Business Plan
Expand offerings of common arts courses after publication of book (Common Arts Education, Feb. 2021, already released through Classical Academic Press). This includes individual, family, and school-related consulting, coursework, and experience-based education offerings. Interest in the common arts (the arts by which we provide for our basic needs away from a supply grid, such as cooking, trade, navigation, medicine, agriculture, animal husbandry, woodworking, stonemasonry, and the like) has been piqued by COVID, and demand for coursework has never been more robust. What was a popular elective before is now front-and-center with regards to re-empowering, re-equipping, and re-framing education: many have realized that these arts of survival are just as important as academic arts, and in fact are best learned alongside and in accord with one another. Our courses offer science and history in context with the work of the hands, and in so doing, not only prepare students with academic skills, now embodied in physical practice, but ALSO with skills that, as Milton put it in his letter Of Education in 1644, "with such a tincture of natural knowledge, that they shall never forget, but daily augment with delight."
-
Self Identified Competition
There are no competitors offering similar coursework and opportunities at this point, other than localized and specialized schools, such as Living Earth School in Charlottesville, VA, and various folk schools, primarily in North Carolina. Our competitors offer specialized tracks, but we offer broad spectrum common arts instruction under a single roof, a single auspice. We are striving to retain master teachers of these diverse arts under one umbrella, and in so doing, encourage them and our students to share, augment, and collaborate on projects according to synergistic talents.
-
Contact Applicant
Subscribe to our Administrator Dashboard to gain full access to this application. Learn More
