SoRA CLEVELAND

The Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to ATTENTION ACTIVISM: the movement to push back against the fracking of human attention by coercive digital technologies. We advance this mission through the STUDY and PRACTICE of radical attention, by which we mean those diverse forms of attention which resist commodification. In our seminar courses, experiential Attention Lab workshops, and other hybrid forms of group teaching and learning, we seek to deepen our shared understanding of attention's relation to human flourishing. Through collaborative study, public programs, and creative projects, the Strother School of Radical Attention aims to draw attention to attention: to stimulate interest in, and research on attention; to nurture communities of commitment to the diversity of attentional forms and practices, and to model modes of collective inquiry that advance the flourishing of human beings, human societies, and our shared planet. SIDEWALK STUDY is SoRA's program in experimental street-level pedagogy. Organized and facilitated by our STUDY CORPS, studies convene members of the public at a group at a bar, park, or other semi-public space for a short close reading of a text. Participants then depart to conduct a Practice of Attention en route to a second location, where they reconvene to synthesize their experience. In this fashion, SIDEWALK STUDY brings together analysis and embodiment, reading and walking, theory and practice… and does it all in PUBLIC SPACE. Since 2023, we’ve gathered more than 1,000 people, traversing more than 250 miles across 135+ unique Studies. Union members, PHD graduates, activists, artists, teachers, students, and humans from all walks of life have gathered under the umbrella of SIDEWALK STUDY. All of our SIDEWALK STUDIES are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.