Learn to Act is a one-day, international workshop to explore the growing movement of alternative education projects taking root across our communities. We’re bringing together a group of practitioners and teachers from across Europe, to ask:

How do you set up an alternative school to engage communities? What’s the value of informal learning and teaching? Can we understand these practices in terms of a civic pedagogy? How can we teach each other if we don’t speak the same language? How such pedagogy can gain recognition? Are we doing something radical?

We’ll be showcasing projects as diverse as container universities, refugee classrooms and rural peer-to-peer learning networks. And we’ll be talking about our experiences running one such project: the Eco-Nomadic School, a trans-European network of local projects across 7 countries, through which we’ve been teaching and learning from each other since 2007.

SPEAKERS INCLUDE

Doina Petrescu (University of Sheffield School of Architecture/AAA Paris) and Kathrin Böhm (MyVillages/Company Drinks) introduce the Eco-Nomadic School.

Keynote from Ruth Morrow (Queens University Belfast) on learning outside the formal school environment.

Short talks on civic pedagogy including:

• Martin Parker (School of Organisation, University of Leicester) on 'The School for Organizing: Or, why we are all experts'
• Julia Udall (Studio Polpo/Sheffield Hallam University) on Solidarity Economies and Ecologies
• Viviana Checchia, Public Engagement Curator at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow
• Chistoph Schäfer, (PlanBude, Hamburg) on 'The City of the Many - How can the local knowledge be scaled up to the level of urban planning?
• Lise Autogena, Professor of Cross-disciplinary Art, Sheffield Hallam University/CRIR, Christiania, Copenhagen

Hands-on workshops on the wider context of alternative education in our communities. Led by practitioners including:

• Meike Schalk (KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm)
• Silviu Medesan & Laura Panait (La Terenuri, Cluj, Romania)
• Steyn Bergs (ex-Casco, Utrecht)
• Paul Stewart (Alternative Art College, Middlesbrough)
• Matt Weston, (Spacemakers, Brighton)
• Valeria Graziano, (Middlesex University, London)
• Bence Komlósi (Architecture for Refugees)
• Jörg Stollmann (Institute for Architecture, Technical University of Berlin)
• Katharina Moebus (Architect, Berlin)

You are invited to actively take part in peer-to-peer workshops we will be running during this day.

Organisers:
Professor Doina Petrescu
Kathrin Bohm
Tom James

Shared lunch provided. Post-workshop dinner at the Foodhall.

The event is supported by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union and SSoA – University of Sheffield

Picture: SSoA Live project Community Economy / Eco-Nomadic School with Brave New Alps in Rovereto, 2016