(Published for Verci)

Our original quest to build the library of the future was a vision born from desire. Desire to put an end to the pipeline that sucks the vitality out of society’s most creative and ambitious individuals. Desire to nurture more trailblazers and re-ignite a collective spirit of ardor. Desire to create infrastructure for people to find and follow their purpose and embark on life-defining quests. And desire to build a genre-bending space that fuses together energy from the explorers and misfits of our world.

With this promise guiding us, the tangible manifestation of Verci was still somewhat blurry: an organism emerging from the periphery, slowly coming into focus. But we’ve been observing how Verci has grown as we approach the 3 month mark of Verci’s Season 0 beta test and built a thesis on the role Verci serves in the new Renaissance.

As I continue researching groups and human institutions that contributed significantly to the world, I’ve been finding a pattern: the value, the shifts - the beauty - imparted by history’s significant institutions often served as countercultural reactions to tragedy or misguided trajectories. In periods of darkness and catastrophe, humanity bends towards a period of rebirth and new possibility.

Amidst the catastrophe of Vietnam War, counterculture hippie movements emerged centered around unity, peace, and impact. These experimental philosophies further culminated in Woodstock and the Summer of Love.

The Bauhaus captured the impulse to build after the devastation of the First World War; it provided a platform for simmering spiritual energy and was a harbinger of a renaissance-like rebirth of design philosophy.

I believe that 2023 has the power to begin crystalizing an unprecedented Renaissance.

Post Covid awakening
With the space Covid gave us to re-examine our lives, there is a greater yearning to challenge the status quo and seek stronger potential for ourselves. Consequently, we are witnessing The Great Resignation, the Lie Flat movement, and increased unconventionality with artists, dropouts, young founders, and non-conformists. 2023 is the first true blank slate we have to accelerate these futures we imagined for ourselves amidst Covid, and we’re emerging from catastrophe into a society with radically new institutional and technological paradigms.

Unprecedented Information and technology to create
From the unbridled power of AI to new paradigms in technologies, the creator has more potential than ever to manifest visions and stir unseen realities to bloom. Pockets of creativity and unconventional career streams have emerged within surprising pockets of capitalism. But as our economic systems and institutions heave with the weight of unprecedentedly disruptive technologies, an unclear future can make us probe into the role of the human and collective values that lead to collective flourishing.

Community to navigate new worlds and ride transitions together
Ultimately, as we emerge into this new world, our belief in the power of community has never been stronger. This is the constant that has knit together humans throughout history. From the sense of safety associated with strength of the tribe, to community-mindedness found in blue zone countries; even the scientifically backed happiness levels that family and community still induce in us. Today, these social fabrics are somewhat tattered, but there is a burgeoning rise in alternative community spaces that are aligned in belief or craft, and can help strengthen our resolve to navigate these new world shifts.

What’s Missing For this Renaissance to Bloom

We must embrace our role as explorers
An abundance of information and inspiration means more people have the ability to pursue their passions and do whatever they want in life. But the infrastructure to turn this into self-purpose and actualization is out of reach, and optionality makes it further difficult to identify the “why” or the “what” one should do.

To actualize, we must lower the cultural and physical barriers to exploration. Exploration and freedom to play around with different hats and identities is as important as having the means to pursue these paths. Free-form flow may allow inspiration to strike or may accelerate a transition towards a new focus.

Environments are important
Environments can powerfully facilitate the space for magic. Most environments are not optimized for exploration or play, but the magic is clear when you find ones that do this well: certain thirdspaces, events, and experiences. The people that will drive the renaissance don’t have the right IRL spaces that can help them plant, accelerate, and deepen serendipity and inspiration. We want Verci to be that space.

Intersectionality creates perspective
We see the importance of artists embracing technology and technologists embracing art, and the need for a balance between the two in order to fully understand and unlock the secrets of human potential and consciousness. The movement towards intersectional education is already happening, but we need to build upon this emergence to truly flourish as a species.

Let’s reconsider why and how we create
Since the industrial revolution, our societal ambitions have, more or less, striven for revenue and scale. But the world is moving in a direction where we must move beyond producing for consumption and ignoring all else. We must embrace craft, and imagine creating more soulfully, creating for love, and creating for true impact.

There must also exist ways to find empowerment without college, during it, and/or after it.
College is still a transformative and empowering institution, and we still believe in its ability to help people explore and achieve class mobility. But there need to be alternative, more accessible avenues for individuals to find prosperity, purpose, and community outside this four-year window.

Verci: The Next Evolution

We’re positioning ourselves as a blueprint for what we believe is needed to cultivate a renaissance. This manifests in two synergistic pillars: The Verci Residency and Verci Campus.


Ambitious, curious, creative people oscillate between modes of exploration and focus throughout their life to stay lifelong learners. Exploration cultivates curiosity, which might pique an interest in something new. As our curiosity crystalizes, we have a decision to focus on these narratives and see them to fruition.

Avoiding stagnation means practicing continuous exploration, which hopefully may lead to new areas of focus that come into view. These cycles may take seasons; they may take decades, but we believe in the importance of having the space to shift between these modes throughout life. Today, it’s difficult to translate curiosity into new potentials. That’s where the Campus and Residency fall into place.

The Verci Campus will be a place for anyone to explore and focus freely. Meanwhile, we’re building the Verci Residency to reduce the friction of pivoting between these modes, and accelerate careering transitions with other residents by your side.


We believe that people must have the space to explore at their own pace, on their own timelines. We shouldn’t have to rush this process through a four-year college window or need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to try again. Verci exists to be a space that allows us to practice being lifelong learners. As we move even beyond 2023, our sincere hope is that our empty nester mothers can come to Verci and explore or find what’s next, our grandmothers can find new talents and share their wisdom with the community, our high school siblings can find a place to focus on what they want to do after school. We can build a space for lifelong learners to bloom.

VERCI MOVING FORWARD

Campus

The Verci campus is a space for explorative people. Whether it be focusing on a venture, your remote job, creating artwork or music production; or exploring deep-tech research, a book, or a substack career; or even immersing yourself in the residency to pivot into a new project; the campus will be the connective tissue for individuals, community partners, and collectives in an ecosystem of experiences, creation labs, growth modules, and accountability.


Campus will be broken into seasonal shifts. Each season kicking off with an intention, and culminating in a themed gallery show. These seasonal shifts will provide a framework for reflection and exploration: from modules we’ve built for exploration to the accountability stemming from the end-of-season gallery.

Our year-round campus is designed to make Verci a holistic lifestyle experience to soulfully learn, reflect, create, and co-exist.

Get Involved

Apply for the campus here

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