CATLAN Open Invitation: Individual thinkers, scholars and creators
Elevate your thought, join our community
CATALN responds to the longstanding sentiment that those aspiring to think, research and teach, can greatly enhance their practices by spending time away from the everyday trappings of mainstream life.
The organisation further embodies the emerging realisation that to push human thought beyond its current frontiers — specifically in regard to knowing, imagining and reimagining the human relationship with Nature — it is essential for thinkers and doers to connect across disciplinary communities. Indeed, a founding essence of CATALN is to facilitate much deeper and more protracted interactions between academics, creatives, artists, designers, planners, managers, influencers and plain everyday “bods”.
Based on these principles, CATALN invites anyone involved in, or interested in developing their thought concerning the relationship between humans and Nature to join our community for a period of intensive intellectual development. We offer two modes of community membership.
Physical Residency
Join our community of scholars, creatives and inventors in the Pyrenees-Oriental (Southern France), for a duration of your choosing with the objectives that suit your own needs. Some come as a retreat for writing: books of fiction and non-fiction, as well as academic articles. Others use a space and resources for other forms of expressive creation. At times our community hosts those finalising projects, while others work at the very beginnings of thoughts and endeavours.
CATALN provides accomodation to suit your preferences, either within our research centre or in the wider community. From there you will make the most of your time to read, think and produce reflections captured in your chosen medium, such as writing or artistic representation. You will have access to both individual and common study and creative space.
Residents also participate in the life of our community, again according to tastes and preferences. This is not only for the benefit of CATALN’s social and physical sustainability, but also as a pedagogically informed experience to further enhance our learning, creativity and invention. For example, we might spend time in small scale food production and preparation for shared meals. This creates time for conversation about our intellectual endeavours, but it also often generates important questions and discussions that would never have emerged in traditional contexts of a studio or library.
Finally, CATLAN connects those in residence to wider experiences. The space and place of our community offers a myriad of opportunities for wider, concentrated learning opportunities, to meet the community, or for the equally high purposes of plain rest and relaxation. A sample of these activities can be found on the page below:
