CICA TN
What is Conservare Institute for the Common Arts?
Conservare means to keep, preserve, protect or guard. CICA (originally Columbia Institute for the Common Arts) is a school for teaching and preserving the lost arts of the historic trades also know as “the common arts.” There is no set defined list of what those specific arts are. They range from carpentry, blacksmithing, masonry, timber framing to soap making, gardening, foraging, etc.
Why teach the Common Arts?
We believe that the “common arts” are as ancient as the creation of the world and what we were ultimately created to do when God gave the command to Adam in the garden to subdue the earth and rule over it in Genesis 1:28.
“The characteristic common to God and man is … the desire and the ability to make things.”
Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
We believe the “common arts” are the general calling of each person to care for the earth around us and to care for one another in community through the work of our hands.
“Unlike many ancient authors, the 12th century educator Hugh of St. Victor valued the common arts because they provide for human needs and offer a way for us to serve others.”
Heather Herrick Jennings
“….you will find that the common arts offer clear avenues to introduce, explore, and make tangible the core disciplines of math, science, and history. They serve as natural vehicles for the practice of the arts of language—grammar, logic, and rhetoric— because mastering them requires reason, research, communication, and careful thought. In addition, they serve as natural vehicles for the practice of the arts of mathematics, the quadrivium. Best of all, the act of practicing the common arts, the dispositions required to master them, and the thoughtful application of their artifacts foster the exploration, distillation, and embodiment of virtue. In short, they embody the liberal arts, form the foundation for the fine arts, and offer avenues for cultivating virtue, all while providing for our basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, tools, health, defense, and much more.”
Chris Hall, Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Hands, Head and Heart
More specifically, we also believe that all humans are gifted in particular ways, and some of those ways go beyond the academics taught in the regular classroom. While we do not want to take away from the importance of those studies, we do want to enhance that experience through the work of the hands to enable those students gifted in those areas to experience success in ways they will not experience in the traditional educational setting and to remove the stigma of what is traditionally known as the skilled trades.
“The characteristic common to God and man is … the desire and the ability to make things.”
Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
We believe the “common arts” are the general calling of each person to care for the earth around us and to care for one another in community through the work of our hands.
“Unlike many ancient authors, the 12th century educator Hugh of St. Victor valued the common arts because they provide for human needs and offer a way for us to serve others.”
Heather Herrick Jennings
“….you will find that the common arts offer clear avenues to introduce, explore, and make tangible the core disciplines of math, science, and history. They serve as natural vehicles for the practice of the arts of language—grammar, logic, and rhetoric— because mastering them requires reason, research, communication, and careful thought. In addition, they serve as natural vehicles for the practice of the arts of mathematics, the quadrivium. Best of all, the act of practicing the common arts, the dispositions required to master them, and the thoughtful application of their artifacts foster the exploration, distillation, and embodiment of virtue. In short, they embody the liberal arts, form the foundation for the fine arts, and offer avenues for cultivating virtue, all while providing for our basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, tools, health, defense, and much more.”
Chris Hall, Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Hands, Head and Heart
More specifically, we also believe that all humans are gifted in particular ways, and some of those ways go beyond the academics taught in the regular classroom. While we do not want to take away from the importance of those studies, we do want to enhance that experience through the work of the hands to enable those students gifted in those areas to experience success in ways they will not experience in the traditional educational setting and to remove the stigma of what is traditionally known as the skilled trades.
Conservare Institute for the Common Arts is in partnership with Agathos Classical School a 501c3 Nonprofit
