A School for the Future —
An Educational Enrichment Programme for the Future Pilots of Spaceship Earth
Imagine…
Imagine a forest clearing where professional artists, scientists, philosophers, are together with young people, playing, exploring, and learning together.
A mathematician sketches equations in the dirt while a theatre maker, a biologist, and an insatiably curious group of young people invent an adventure-based game about ant colonies. A philosopher of the history of science shares their other abiding interest - medieval sword-fighting - using branches from the forest, while a musician experiments with voices, birdsong, and sound recording equipment. Deep discussion and laughter echo as a group debates the rules of their democratic “ecosystem council.”
Everyone, young people and adults, is an expert in playing, learning, and helping others learn about the world through play.
This is Buckminster College—a living, breathing laboratory of curiosity, creativity, and play. Buckminster is not just a school enrichment program; it is a shared adventure—a space where play is the language of learning, complexity is transformed into relational, play-based understanding and wonder, and intergenerational collaboration sparks inspiration for everyone involved.
Welcome to Buckminster
Buckminster College takes its name from Buckminster Fuller, who envisioned Spaceship Earth—a planet where we are all interconnected, co-navigating an uncertain future. Inspired by this idea, Buckminster is a nomadic, part-time educational enrichment program designed to prepare young people to navigate complexity, collaborate across disciplines, and take shared responsibility for the world they will help shape.
At Buckminster, young people (ages 10–16) learn directly from artists, scientists, and philosophers in an intergenerational space of play and exploration. Through immersive experiences—games, theatre, systems simulations, and collaborative storytelling—we transform complex ideas into lived experience. Instead of learning about complexity, participants experience it first-hand.
This year, we are organising a multi-day residential session around summer 2025 where young people and leading thinkers will co-create an adventure in learning. Buckminster is designed to work alongside traditional schooling, and we can assist with school permissions for students needing enrichment.
Why Buckminster?
A NASA study found that 98% of 5-year-olds scored at "genius level" for creative thinking. By age 10, this dropped to 30%. By adulthood, only 2% remained at that level. This loss is not natural—it is learned. Conventional education, with its rigid structures and single-answer logic, trains creativity out of young people.
Instead of telling students to sit still and listen, we encourage them to think, move, build, and experiment. We combine science, art, theatre, ecology, and philosophy in a way that helps young people develop systems thinking, adaptability, and leadership—skills essential for co-stewarding the future of Spaceship Earth.
More Fun,
More Challenging
It’s becoming more and more to understand the Earth as a single, interconnected system. The next generations will need the skills to learn how to navigate in the interconnected complex adaptive system that is planet Earth. Learning to work together in this complexity is one of the most important skills for the future.
Unlike traditional schools, which emphasise compliance and standardised answers, Buckminster fosters creativity, free thought, self-direction, and collective leadership. Young people are not passive students; they are co-learners and co-creators. They help run the school, make decisions, and shape the curriculum in real time. The result is an experience that is not only more fun than conventional schooling but also more rigorous—demanding deep engagement, adaptability, and relational thinking.
Buckminster College is an English-speaking educational enrichment program designed to be taken alongside regular schooling or as a complement to homeschooling. Participants collaborate with leading thinkers, scientists, artists, and philosophers from programs associated with the Center Leo Apostel (CLEA), a hub for transdisciplinary research at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, including: the School of Thinking, The Artscience Department, and the Imaginary Institute.
Self-Organisation at Buckminster
Inspired by nature, Buckminster operates as an evolving organism. Instead of imposing a fixed curriculum, the structure emerges from the collective intelligence of its participants. This is not just about education—it is about practicing self-organisation in real time.
Participants take responsibility for shaping their environment, negotiating group decisions, and co-creating learning experiences. The school is governed democratically, with young people playing a direct role in decision-making, governance, and even logistical planning.
This model is inspired by complexity science and cybernetics—fields that study how systems self-organise without top-down control. At Buckminster, learning mirrors these principles: a network of relationships, feedback loops, and emergent structures.
Adults are not rigid authority figures; they are co-learners who bring their own passions and projects into the ecosystem. Whether designing experiments, building installations, or crafting performances, they engage in the same process of playful inquiry—modeling a form of lifelong learning that is adaptive, exploratory, and deeply collaborative.
How We Learn
Buckminster’s methodology borrows from the simplicity of play-centered education:
Learning Through Play – Concepts like swarm intelligence, cybernetics, and governance are explored through role-playing, immersive theatre, and collaborative problem-solving.
Interdisciplinary Thinking – Young people learn from leading artists, scientists, and philosophers, blending knowledge across ecology, psychology, technology, self-organisation, and more.
Intergenerational Collaboration – At Buckminster, everyone is both a learner and a teacher. A 12-year-old might teach a physicist about improvisation, while a philosopher and musician invent a game with a group of teenagers.
Young people at the helm - Buckminster is evolving as a part-time programme that can, at least in part, be shaped and run by its young participants, as a key component of an empowering educational approach that believes that young people can be involved in running the school enrichment programme themselves.
Contact with nature, and with diversity.
Learning to navigate complexity through play
Traditional schooling often treats play as a distraction. Buckminster College does the opposite—recognising that play is the most powerful tool for learning. Play is how complex systems evolve, how humans and animals test possibilities, and how creativity thrives.
At Buckminster, play is not just a break from learning—it is learning. Through games, immersive theatre, and puzzles, participants experience concepts like swarm intelligence, cybernetics, and self-organisation first-hand. Learning is embodied, relational, and dynamic. Instead of passively absorbing information, participants generate knowledge together—whether by co-designing an ecosystem simulation, exploring philosophy through improvisation, or building structures using biomimetic principles.
Read more about the philosophy of play and play-based education here.
Who Is Buckminster For?
Buckminster is ideal for:
Homeschoolers, life-hackers, and nomadic learners seeking an alternative educational experience.
High achievers and creative thinkers who need enrichment beyond traditional schooling.
Students who need a change of routine—those who thrive outside conventional structures.
Young people seeking a dynamic, interdisciplinary environment where they can engage deeply with big ideas, creativity, and play.
Most schools grant permission for students to attend, especially those recognised as needing educational acceleration or alternative learning experiences. We can assist in coordinating this process.
Our Partners
Buckminster is an educational outreach project of CLEA (the Center Leo Apostel for Transdisciplinary Studies at VUB in Brussels) and collaborates with:
The School of Thinking – A postgraduate program on complex problem-solving.
The CLEA ArtScience Group – Exploring art, science, ecology, and play.
Systems At Play – Researching self-organisation and emergent intelligence.
The Imaginary Institute – A hub for collective imagination and interdisciplinary inquiry.
The Current Program: 2025
This year, Buckminster will co-create a multi-day residential session between October 10 - 12.
In this space, young people will engage in interdisciplinary explorations, collaborate with researchers, and create their own learning experiences, between nature, play, art and science.
The program is designed to be adaptive—what we create this year will inform future iterations. Young participants will have a direct role in shaping its evolution, deciding what activities and themes to explore next.
Get in contact to find out more using the form below.
Join Us
Buckminster College is an experiment in what education can be. A space where young people develop the skills to navigate complexity, think across disciplines, and take an active role in shaping the world around them.
We invite you to join us—not just as a participant, but as a co-creator. Help us shape the next iteration of Buckminster. Play with us. Learn with us. Build with us.
Get in touch using the contact form for more information:
A Brief History of Buckminster College…
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