New School of the Anthropocene (NSOTA)

Dedicated to addressing ecological recovery and civic rejuvenation through the arts and humanities, and will be incorporated in September 2021 as a community benefit society.

"The NSOTA’s programme is born of the need to engage with the prospect of social crisis and ecological ruin that characterises the 21st Century: to answer, once again, the call to ‘Make it New.’

As a non-residential school, we have stripped back the cosmetic ‘Student Experience.’ We believe that students are best placed to organise their own social activities, for the purpose of a university is to teach students. And this is where the NSOTA’s time, energy and resources are placed.

The pause enforced by the Covid-19 pandemic has afforded a unique opportunity to rethink the wider basis of our social practices, against a pressing context of climate emergency and mass species extinction; of economic depression and sanctioned inequality.  

The New School has been founded by a collective of academics from the University of Cambridge, alongside experienced lecturers and artists across the UK, Europe and the USA, none of whom regard education as a business and students as customers."