Chalk & Talk: Modes of teaching and knowledge distribution

Six independent, bottom-up educational initiatives share their experiences of experimenting with different systems of teaching, radically reassessing accepted modes of knowledge distribution: Critical Practice, FLAG, Interdisciplinary Critical Forum, Parallel School, Thinking & Practice Group and Department 21.

Here some of the things that were discussed on the day:

Getting started

• In order to get people together to initiate a group, there needs to be found a common ground, goal or aim. Commitment, enthusiasm and trust seem to be key attributes to keep a group going.

Communication

• How to form a horizontal structure? Might horizontality mean equal opportunity?

• How to keep up a healthy communication within the group? The chemistry in the group is important.

• Trans-college communication should be improved so that like-minded students can meet across colleges.

• Self-initiated educational initiatives will always be institution-specific, but still connecting across institutions can prove valuable and supportive.

• Documentation vs. Legacy – for an initiative it might be more productive to leave something that sparks imagination and reflection, rather then a 1:1 representation of the activities.

Accessibility

• How to keep a group accessible? How public do you want a project to be? Does a project become elitist, if the information is not stored in a place that can be accessed by everyone?

• Open calls for participation are a common mode of keeping groups open. Here often just one person gets back and this is already seen as a success.

• What other, maybe more efficient, modes of keeping a group open are there?

Group vs. Individual

• What role play personal interests within a collective goal? Where do you find an agreement between the individual and collective interests?

• It seems to be beneficial, if in a group there is space for employing personal skills.

Authority

• How to deal with the question of authority in student-led or extra curricula projects? What authority do you need for those initiatives to be accepted by the student body? Could the work or participation in them not be valued as everything else one does in college?

Organisation

• Critical Practice share their draft budget guidelines online.

• More about open organisations and transparent decision-making can be found here.

Re-shaping

• New necessities evolve throughout running a project, so it is necessary to adapt to these in a flexible way.

• It seems to be beneficial, if initiatives have some sort of perpetual restructuring build in.

Supporting

• How to network if you don’t do shows? Is cash all you can support these practitioners with? Could we think of a way to support people who have a non-medium based practice?

And finally:

• There is no good or bad practice, lets speak about productive practice instead.