Chalk & Talk: Modes of teaching and knowledge distribution

Department 21
27.06.2010 RCA

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.



Notes:
Flag, Joana, Bianca

How to deal with the question of authority of student-led or extra curricula projects? Could the work or participation in them not be valued as everything else one does in college? What authority do you need for those initiatives to be accepted by the student body?
How to keep a group accessible? Should information be widely accessible? Does a project become elitist, if the information is not stored in a place that can be accessed by everyone. Here the question comes up of how public you want the project to be.
New necessities evolve throughout running a project, so it is necessary to adapt to these in a flexible way.
Open calls for participation. Sometimes just one person gets back. This needs already to be seen as a success.
Trans-college communication should be improved so that like-minded students can meet across colleges.
These educational initiatives will always be institution-specific, but still connecting across institutions can prove valuable and supportive.
How to network if you don’t do shows? We should find a way of supporting people who have a non-medium based practice. Is cash all you can support them with?
Documentation vs. Legacy. As an initiative it is more productive to leave something that sparks imagination and reflection, rather then a 1:1 representation of the activities.

Sophie, Metod, Jay, Fabio, Callum
Initiating – getting people together, finding a common ground/aim/goal
Commitment, enthusiasm and trust are key attributes.
Openess – creating possibilities for people to join in
Collective in?? – forming a horizontal structure. (Here we discussed that horizontality might mean equal opportunity, but not that no one takes the lead.)
What role play personal interests within a collective goal?
Strong collective interests
Healthy Communication
In each group their needs to be space for employing the personal skills.
Initiatives should have some sort of perpetual restructuring build in.
Where do you find an agreement between the individual and collective interests?


Katrine, Marsha, Paul, Terry
Individuals – groups – specific. The chemistry in the group is important.
Be bothered. Something about value and aim – finding a common ground – trust.
There is no good or bad practice, lets speak about productive practice instead.
Occupying a social space – social engagement
(see image)