In General

Robert Bliss: The other activities: work, social, travel, and especially general meetings were vital aspects of the educational process and the intent was to produce informed, aware, responsible, socialized individuals. Involvement was a choice. Participation was voluntary, not orchestrated but difficult to avoid.

Harold Raymond: The ideal was a student who participated in a number of community activities such as plays, concerts, social evenings and college governance but not necessarily all of them, or on particular occasions.... Personally I found living in the community stimulating and educationally valuable especially in areas unrelated to my studies, such as concerts, plays, and discussions of art and philosophy.

Sue Spayth Riley: As I look back, I think the interweaving of the natural beauty and the ever present sound of classical music in one form or another – concerts in the evening, Bach cantatas practiced, madrigals echoing, visiting artists – all created for me a rich and deep experience that will be with me always.

Robert Sunley: Being at Black Mountain was an immersion, more than a set of discrete classes; I lived in an atmosphere in which many different things took place, all somehow part of an overall experience. Classes were part of this, separate but still not separate. I learned from some classes which I never "took"—I absorbed quite a lot from Albers's and Rice's classes by standing by, talking, listening, looking—all in passing, not formally.