Psychegenics workshops were launched, and by 1977 these friends and students had scored such breakthroughs in radically accelerated learning that Win declared the creation of Project Renaissance as a division of the organization. In 1995 Win made Project Renaissance the official name of the entire organization, carrying forward its programs of research, publication, consultation, and training. Most of its training programs are offered non-commercially, through arrangements with local sponsoring institutions, organizations and groups around the world, and through material freely given away on its website. Win Wenger has been the creative and administrative force behind Project Renaissance throughout the years.

Project Renaissance has published over 80 books, monographs, and other special educational resources, some of them only temporarily out of print. We want to keep them in print, or return them into print, because each has made a unique, and uniquely valued, contribution.

Project Renaissance has taken up the task originally defined by C.E.L.T. — the Compendium of Enhanced Learning Techniques, a project initially commissioned by the Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching to prepare an encyclopedia and information depot which should become available in all libraries. That Compendium was and is intended to contain all available instructions, and research data organized like a Consumer's Guide, on all major methods of teaching, learning, training or other instruction from around the world which yield learning outcomes highly superior to those of standard methods currently in general use.

Data and operationally detailed instructions are being compiled and will eventually be made available to anyone, anywhere, and through most libraries and electronets.

This Project Renaissance website is a small start on this effort. The review task, originally thought to number in the hundreds of methods, has grown to include thousands. CELT did not win support, but its goal lives on in Project Renaissance. The first major publication in the context is the book Beyond Teaching And Learning, which contains some of Project Renaissance's own techniques for better teaching and learning.

The academic publishing wing of Project Renaissance is known as The Library of The Republic of the Sciences.

The Institute of Visual Thinking consults, conducts research mainly into visual thinking methods and processes, and conducts a number of diverse local thinktanks each based upon different methods for comparison.

The science support wing of Project Renaissance is known as The Center for Creativity in the Sciences and offers creative methods for scientists to make breakthrough discoveries in their various fields.

Whatever can improve the quality of human performance, human ability, and/or human experience, is of main interest to Project Renaissance. The mission of Project Renaissance is to find and develop ways to empower the individual and to empower people at large. To do this well enough will, we believe, solve most of the seemingly unsolvable problems of general common concern, which outcome is also part of our mission. We have fortified our mission not with generalities but with specific methods and techniques.

Project Renaissance has focused its educational and research work into five main areas:

• creative problem-solving and creativity/innovation/invention, and the arts
• improving creative productivity in science
• better methods of teaching and learning
• actualizing and improving human potential
• general/societal, where we've contributed or offered solutions to major problems

As this website develops over time, you will see more and more of these invaluable techniques and resources simply given away, any one of which (in the hands of more mercantile folk) might be the basis for a multi-billion-dollar industry. They still can be, only not on any basis which excludes people from ready use of and access to such resources and to their own birthright abilities.

Project Renaissance offers a number of workshops and training courses at a nominal cost where you can attend in person to learn and practice these techniques and even learn to become a trainer yourself.

An annual conference — The Double Festival of Creative Problem-Solving Methods and Accelerated/Enhanced Learning Techniques — was originally founded to celebrate the previously undiscovered 95% overlap between these two fields. It is held in the Washington, DC, area. Details about these conferences are posted under Events.

• Many books, including Discovering the Obvious and Beyond Teaching and Learning.
• An electronic newsletter, The Stream (formerly Capital Ideasmiths).
• The Winsights monthly column.
• Features and up-to-the-minute developments throughout this, the official Project Renaissance website.

If no existing school is sufficiently responsive and responsible, we intend by the year 2011 to create Renaissance University, an institution both for teaching and for research, with associated laboratory schools at various educational levels. Read the preliminary draft Prospectus.

Renaissance University, if we have to create that separately instead of improving an existing institution, will be a multi-centered, international, liberal arts institution, intended to quickly become the very best teaching university in the world.

By the year 2015, if not before, a substantial portion of the salary of its faculty and staff will depend upon the gains made by their students, across a broad range of measures. Such incentives are important toward achieving our goals since we wish the origins and control of Renaissance University to be as broadly based as possible, reflecting many programs and viewpoints besides our own. To advance these purposes, we warmly will welcome partners with their own well-developed and well-thought-out educational ideas and objectives.

Renaissance University will be dedicated to enabling ordinary students to become truly Renaissance men and women. Its main liberal arts program should have each student originally and meaningfully published in several professional fields by the time of their graduation. Renaissance University will also work to foster a renaissance in the arts and in the sciences.

Our techniques are already equal to this task, though certainly not yet our staff or resource base. Meanwhile, these techniques and some other invaluable resources are now yours, as you find some of them throughout this website and in such other outstanding sites as those of several of our friends, at Beyond Human and Genius by Design, among others.

• You can register for a free membership in Project Renaissance,
• You can join discussions in Project Renaissance-related eGroups,
• You can subscribe to the official newsletter, The Stream (complimentary with membership), and
• You can send email to Win Wenger.