Life at the College
For images from life at the college please take a look at the Student Life Gallery
College Facilities
The college has a library, bookshop, telephone, fax, internet facilities, a small food shop and a laundry. There is a variety of shops in Forest Row (20 - 25 minutes walk from the college).
Accommodation
The college provides single room accommodation either in student houses on the college campus or with a landlady in the village of Forest Row. Unfortunately we are unable to organise accommodation for families.
Meals
The college kitchen prepares meals with primarily organic/biodynamic produce and provides whole food vegetarian dishes. Student houses and landladies have some limited cooking facilities for those who wish to be self-catering.
Daily Timetable
The college week runs from Monday to Friday and the average day begins at 8.30 a.m. and ends between 3.30 and 5.00 p.m. The weekends are generally free.
Community Life and Work
For students attending full-time courses at the college, life here is also the life of a community. Those who choose to come here vary in age, country of origin, language and experience and this diversity creates a rich and cultured community life. This life flourishes in conversations over breakfast, comparing poems or mole sightings, in songs over washing up or in shared observation of rare flowers on a tulip tree. Once a week in College Meeting everyone gathers so that different courses have the opportunity to share examples of their work, announcements are made, and community issues are discussed.
All students are asked to contribute some time and work to help maintain and run the college. These activities include leaf-raking day once per year, weekend work of two hours once or twice per term, help in the kitchen preparing vegetables for the daily meals, washing up once or twice per week and work to maintain the spaces that each course and the whole college use. The work that we all put into Emerson (on a social level as well as the necessary practical tasks) has the effect of creating an atmosphere of warmth and intimacy on which many people remark when first visiting the college. Everyone contributes to and creates the community. Only with these contributions can Emerson College continue in the way that it does.
Social and Cultural Life
The full-time course work is supplemented by a range of evening and weekend activities.
Each week, evenings are devoted to a variety of activities that are open to all students and staff: for example, choir (on Tuesdays) study and craft groups (on Mondays) and occasional lectures (usually on Wednesdays). None of these activities are compulsory, but they add to the richness of the experience.
There are weekend workshops on many weekends of each term, which are open to all, as well as storytelling performances, concerts and plays. In addition, throughout the year there are college events: poetry evenings and performances by various courses.
Also during the year, we celebrate festivals which connect the changing outer images of nature to movements of our inner life. From Michaelmas to Christmas and from Easter to Whitsun and the St. John's fire at mid-summer, we try to re-create these Christian festivals, not out of traditional forms, but out of a renewing inspiration which searches for a celebration out of meaning. In addition to these we welcome other festivals at the initiative of students.
Larger Community
Emerson College does not exist alone. Within the Forest Row/ East Grinstead area there is Michael Hall Steiner School, a Christian Community Church, two biodynamic farms, Peredur Centre for the Arts which includes Tobias School of Art and Artemis School, and the Part-time Course for the London College of Eurythmy. There is also an active local branch of the Anthroposophical Society. All of these form a larger community of anthroposophical institutions and interested individuals. There are lectures, workshops, performances and concerts that create a lively cultured schedule of events.