Motto | "The Telluride Institute fosters the transition to a sustainable world." |
---|---|
Established | 1984 |
President | Dan Collins |
Faculty | Nonprofit organization |
Budget | Revenue: $209,603 Expenses: $235,205 (FYE December 2015) [1] |
Address | Po Box 1770 Telluride, CO 81435 |
Location | |
Website | www.tellurideinstitute.org |
The Telluride Institute (TI) was founded in 1984 in the resort town of Telluride, Colorado, by John Lifton, Pamela Zoline, John Clute, John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, authors of the Megatrends books, and Amory and Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
The original mission of the Telluride Institute was to organize and promote the first Telluride Ideas Festival, 1985's "Reinventing Work." Participants included left-wing British politician Shirley Williams, the Juilliard String Quartet's Robert Mann and then-Senator Al Gore Jr. [2]
Since then, the Institute has held numerous Ideas Festivals, including 1988's "Perestroika," the first event in the United States to be co-sponsored by a domestic non-governmental organization and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR (the only political party permitted in the USSR at the time), and 1989's "Housing the Community."
Two Ideas Festivals spawned major projects:
1992's "Water: The Upper San Miguel Watershed" gave birth to the San Miguel Watershed Coalition, now an independent nonprofit group whose 2006 Watershed Report Card inspired the Institute to hold a lecture series addressing the issue that summer. The TI also created three “living classrooms” where students at schools in the area can study the ecology of the watershed.
1993's "TeleCommunity" spawned the InfoZone, a project which made Telluride the first small town in the United States not affiliated with a university or corporation to have direct dial-in to the Internet through a dedicated Internet POP tied to a pervasive community tele-computing network.
Other notable patrons of the Ideas Festival include Soviet cultural ambassador Alexander Potemkin, novelist Edward Abbey, Rep. Newt Gingrich, Reagan strategist Lee Atwater, and Tom Hayden, the co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), along with several United States senators and governors from Colorado and neighboring states.
The Telluride Institute has expanded to include many other projects since its inception.
In 1997, the TI invented the idea of Greenbucks, printed vouchers that one earns by working for environmental clean-up and restoration projects and that can be used as tickets to local concerts or at participating stores and restaurants. The institute administered the Greenbucks program in Telluride, Mountain Village, and other nearby towns. [3]
In partnership with the Town of Telluride, the TI held its first annual black bear awareness week in 2005. It included lectures, performances and a community celebration on Telluride’s Main Street to educate area residents about the proper way to coexist with the local bear population. In 2006, the institute took over the organization of the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival, a popular event that involves lectures, film screenings, foraging trips, and cooking demonstrations.
In 2006 John Lifton and Pamela Zoline founded the "Centre for the Future" in the Czech border town of Slavonice. The Centre planned to hold, in September 2006, two simultaneous dual-language festivals: “Robot,” a gathering of science fiction authors and artists inspired by science from the US, UK and the Czech Republic, and “Cultural Landscapes,” examining the impact of society on the surface of the Earth and vice versa through panels and exhibits regarding architecture, urban planning, landscape design, land art and new technologies of mapping and representing topography.
Alan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) design. At Xerox PARC he led the design and development of the first modern windowed computer desktop interface. There he also led the development of the influential object-oriented programming language Smalltalk, both personally designing most of the early versions of the language and coining the term "object-oriented." He has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society of Arts. He received the Turing award in 2003.
Telluride is the county seat and most populous town of San Miguel County in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Colorado. The town is a former silver mining camp on the San Miguel River in the western San Juan Mountains. The first gold mining claim was made in the mountains above Telluride in 1875, and early settlement of what is now Telluride followed. The town was founded in 1878 as "Columbia", but due to confusion with a California town of the same name, was renamed Telluride in 1887 for the gold telluride minerals found in other parts of Colorado. These telluride minerals were never found near Telluride, but the area's mines for some years provided zinc, lead, copper, silver, and other gold ores.
San Juan County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 705, making it the least populous county in Colorado. The county seat and the only incorporated municipality in the county is Silverton. The county name is the Spanish language name for "Saint John", the name Spanish explorers gave to a river and the mountain range in the area. With a mean elevation of 11,240 feet, San Juan County is the highest county in the United States and also has the two highest elevation houses in the United States; the ‘Bonnie Belle’ above Animas Forks at 11,900’ – 11,950’ elevation and an unnamed house above Picayune Gulch at 12,000’ elevation.
Ouray County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 4,874. The county seat is Ouray. Because of its rugged mountain topography, Ouray County is also known as the "Switzerland of America".
Dolores County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,326. The county seat is Dove Creek.
Naturita is a statutory town in Montrose County, Colorado, United States. The population was 485 at the 2020 census, down from 546 in 2010.
The Yampa River flows 250 miles (400 km) through northwestern Colorado, United States. Rising in the Rocky Mountains, it is a tributary of the Green River and a major part of the Colorado River system. The Yampa is one of the few free-flowing rivers in the western United States, with only a few small dams and diversions.
The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. The institute is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It also has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, its original home.
eTown is a 501c3 non-profit broadcast organization based in Boulder, Colorado. eTown is a nationally syndicated multimedia and event production company. The eTown radio broadcast can be heard on National Public Radio, community radio stations, and commercial radio. The program has a variety show format featuring live musical performances, interviews with musicians, authors, and other public figures.
Dallas Divide is a high mountain pass in the United States state of Colorado located on State Highway 62 about 12 miles (19 km) west of the town of Ridgway.
Wilson Peak is a 14,023-foot (4,274 m) mountain peak in the U.S. state of Colorado. It is located in the Lizard Head Wilderness of the Uncompahgre National Forest, in the northwestern San Juan Mountains. It is the highest point in San Miguel County.
Pamela Zoline is an American writer and painter, born in Chicago, living in the United States in Telluride, Colorado.
Telluride Bluegrass Festival is an annual music festival in Telluride, Colorado hosted by Planet Bluegrass. Although traditionally the festival focuses on bluegrass music, it often features music from a variety of related genres.
James Bradley Orman was an American politician and railroad builder. He served as the 12th Governor of Colorado from 1901 to 1903. He was a Democrat.
Telluride Skiesort is a ski resort located in Mountain Village, Colorado.
Redvale is an unincorporated town, a post office, and a census-designated place (CDP) located in and governed by Montrose County, Colorado, United States. The CDP is a part of the Montrose, CO Micropolitan Statistical Area. The Redvale post office has the ZIP Code 81431. At the 2020 census, the population of the Redvale CDP was 172, down from 236 in 2010.
This is an alphabetical list of articles related to the U.S. State of Colorado.
Fort Peabody was a military post in southwestern Colorado, situated at 13,365 feet elevation on the county line between Ouray and San Miguel Counties, making it the highest historical post of its kind in the United States. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 30, 2005 as significant to the state and nation's labor history.
Founded in 2005, the Aspen Ideas Festival (AIF) is a week-long event held in Aspen, Colorado in the United States. The Aspen Ideas Festival program of events includes discussions, seminars, panels, and tutorials from journalists, designers, innovators, politicians, diplomats, presidents, judges, musicians, artists, and writers.
Lindsey Ross is an American fine-art photographer based in Santa Barbara, California, known for creating artwork using the time-intensive wet-plate collodion photographic process. Ross is known for creating ultra large format 32-by-24-inch images on metal (tintypes) and glass (ambrotypes) using one of three Chamonix view cameras that size in existence, keeping alive the collodion method invented in the 1850s.