Educator, playwright, director, performer, writer, dancer, and kitsch gardener: Len Barron began college when he was thirty years old after years of hauling scrap iron, selling magazines and driving a taxi. Since graduating from the University of Colorado in l967 and Antioch-Putney Graduate School in l969, he has been engaged in various education projects that include founding and directing a school for former high school dropouts and teaching at the University of Colorado, San Diego State University, Prescott College in Arizona and Dull Knife Memorial College on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. For ten years he was an interviewer on KGNU, community radio in Boulder, Colorado.

A more detailed account is below.

Contributions to the Boulder, Colorado community

1964 Organized a fund-raiser for disabled local bookstore owner, Clancy Sheehy, in an attempt to keep open the beloved beat/hippie hangout, the Brillig Works Bookstore on the Hill. Among other performances, Prof. Howard Higman did his imitation of Eleanor Roosevelt to a packed house in the Glenn Miller Ballroom.

1965 Founded and was the first Director of the CU Volunteer Clearing House, a volunteer program that continues to this day and has spun off several others. In this effort, Len enlisted hundreds of student volunteers to work in the community.

1969 Founded and was first Director of Spring, an alternative high school program for former dropouts.

1980 Created On Cabbages and Kings, a daily interview program on KGNU community radio. Len was the Tuesday morning interviewer for six years.

1982 Initiated The Test of Time, the Stan Brakhage KGNU FM radio series in which filmmaker Professor Brakhage shared recordings of poets, music, plays and dramas that he'd collected over the years.

1982 Organized The Agenda is the Bomb, a week-long series of talks, workshops, and films on the nuclear bomb issue, held at the University of Colorardo.

1983 Organized KGNU's first remote broadcast to cover the encirclement of protest around Rocky Flats.

1986 Created On Parenting and Other Things, a weekly interview program on KGNU FM radio, on parenting and education. Len was co-host for four years.

2000 Raised funds and commissioned local artist Ken Bernstein to do a life-size oil painting of Clancy Sheehy. The painting was donated to the Boulder Public Library and now hangs on the south end of the Library's interior creek bridge.

2004 Interviewed by Nancy Nachman-Hunt for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program, a project of the Boulder Public Library Foundation (OH1197v).

2007 Guest speaker at the Boulder Science Fair Awards.

2008 Speaks on Beauty and Playfulness at the Boulder Public Library.

Benefit Performances

1989 for the Parenting Center: Walking Lightly ... a Portrait of Einstein

1990 for Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center: Walking Lightly … a Portrait of Einstein

1995 for the Quakers Friends Meeting: On the Pleasures of Growing Older

1998 for the Walter Orr Roberts Music Scholarship: Walking Lightly … a Portrait of Einstein

2002 for the Parenting Place: On the Pleasures of Growing Older

2008 for Mothers Acting Up and in celebration of his 75th birthday: Walking Lightly … a Portrait of Einstein

2009 for Mothers Acting Up: Walking Lightly … a Portrait of Einstein

Theatre Pieces

1974 Good Morning, Writer/Director/Performer

1980 Growing Older, Etc Ta Ta, Writer/Director

1982 Well, If You Rub Two Sticks Together, Writer/Director/Performer

1989 Walking Lightly, a Portrait of Einstein, Writer/Director/Solo Performer

1992 Wild and Slow, Writer/Director/Solo Performer

1994 On the Pleasures of Growing Older, Writer/Director/Solo Performer

2000 The Sky is Blue and Birds Fly in It, Writer/Choreographer/Performer

2004 A Matter of Heart, Producer/Director

2005 One Old Broad Looks at Life and Death, Producer/Director

2009 Einstein and Niels Bohr... A Fairy Tale, Writer/Director/Solo Performer

Manner of Work

Since creating the Einstein theatre piece, Len has also given talks and workshops for students and faculty, at all levels, sharing Einstein's perspective on education and making a life.

Beyond his work in schools, Len has worked with science museums and community theatres, churches and synagogues, and at corporate settings. Whether presenting for fourth-graders or teachers or plasma physicists or corporate officials, the thread that runs throughout his work is a mix of fairness, beauty and playfulness - the principles that governed the daily life of Albert Einstein.

Fairness, beauty, and playfulness make for a beautiful equation, an E=mc2 for the 2lst century. The proof is in the pudding; find anyone whose life is grounded in these qualities and you will be in the company of someone who lives a fertile life and is dearly loved.