Taliesin Fellows, the alumni organization of the School of Architecture at Taliesin was formally initiated in 1932 when twenty-three apprentices came to live and learn at Taliesin. The sources of this educational philosophy have roots that go back much further than the 1930s. The program of the School, while remaining remarkably true to its heritage, has evolved through experience and the need to address changing times.

In 1931, Frank and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright circulated a prospectus to an international group of distinguished scholars, artists, and friends, announcing their plan to form a school at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin to “Learn by Doing.”

They anticipated a core faculty, “resident foremen,” at the school supplemented by “a guest-system of visitation, consultation and criticism” and faculty from the “nearest university” who would make philosophy and psychology and other disciplines available “by extension work.” The “Wisconsin Idea” at the University of Wisconsin conceived of the entire State as a classroom, and the Wrights with close friends at the University proposed to make full use of it.

The students, or “apprentices,” would round out their education in the spirit of Tolstoy’s “What to Do.”

“The entire work of feeding and caring for the student body so far as possible should be done by itself . . . work in the gardens, fields, animal husbandry, laundry, cooking, cleaning, serving should rotate among the students according to some plan that would make them all do their bit with each kind of work at some time.”