The groups cooperating in the Cluster Popular Education: Re-actualizations, Arts Education/Social Movements are located in the cities Barcelona/Madrid, Spain; Brasilia/Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bogotá, Columbia; Ljubljana, Slovenia; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Quito, Ecuador. We are connected basically to higher education, gallery and community mediation in museums, artistic practices and militant research.
We have recognized in the different geopolitical contexts the role that cultural, educational and heritage policies play in the configuration of contemporary cities. The “exploitation of the cultural capital of cities”, the implementation of “innovation laboratories”, processes of gentrification, creative and tourism industries are changing urban landscapes and shaping the relationship between educational/cultural institutions and the territories they are located in, demanding the flexibilization and adaption of cultural workers and habitants alike to the dominant model of economic development.
In this context we ask: Which alliances can we build between artistic and educational practices to foster the regeneration of local knowledges, forms of collective learning, and the re-organization of educational and cultural institutions, to counter the homogenising and marketing-oriented approach of supranational discourses?
With this aim in mind, we plan to revisit the genealogies and the theoretical and methodological contributions of popular educators in different contexts and historical moments, paying attention to their relations with social movements, and to the resistences and influences they developed concerning the institutions. With this approach, we intend to take up reflections, ressources and tools from these histories for contemporary practices and disputes. Can we, in doing this excercise, contribute to an understanding of education and culturale as a part of a yet to be constructed politics of the common?
While every group carries out its research project in accordance with the characteristics of the location, the cluster is a platform for convergence, exchange, feedback and for cooperatively generating learning units. We will:
- share theoretical references and methodological tools
- share archives and histories of popular education from out different contexts and exchange via periodic reports on the progress, problematics and successes in the process of exploring the archives.
- exchange reflections on how institutions work in the different contexts and historical moments, to identify factors and strategies to expand possibilities of institutional transformation.
- organize physical and virtual meetings for capacitation and sharing the research process.
- Assemble, edit, design and publish learning units, open educational ressources, based on the process and the results of the different inquiries.