Sustaining Alternative Universities

UK Free University Network (FUN)

Sustaining Alternative Universities

Collaborative Research Conference

1–2 December 2012

Oxford, UK


"They will admit that little is to be expected from present-day governments, since these live and act according to a murderous code. Hope remains only in the most difficult task of all: to reconsider everything from the ground up, so as to shape a living society inside a dying society. [People] must therefore, as individuals, draw up among themselves, within frontiers and across them, a new social contract which will unite them according to more reasonable principles.’ " (Albert Camus, ‘Neither victim nor executioner’, 1946)

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"Following on from the inaugural meeting of the UK Free University Network held in early 2012, we are calling out to representatives of all free universities and to all those who wish to participate in a conference with a more focused objective.

In recent years, we have witnessed the accelerated neoliberal capitalist colonisation of the university. In the UK (and far beyond) many students are now priced out of higher education and the academic finds him/herself subservient to the logic and interests of capital. In response to this intolerable reality, many groups of scholars, students, and others have come together independently to create alternative, ‘free’ universities.

The ‘Sustaining Alternative Universities’ conference, as a space for coordinating research and sharing knowledge and experience, seeks to support these projects in taking further decisive steps towards the creation of a national movement of individuals and organisations dedicated to the construction and development of alternative democratic, critical, and ultimately sustainable higher education communities.

Sustainability: history, dialogue, and practice

The successes of this movement hinge on its sustainability. ‘How can we build, develop, and maintain truly sustainable educational communities outside the existing institutional frameworks?’ is the question upon which our collective investigations and discussions should be founded. Therefore, our collective task is to conceptualise, research, imagine, and, ultimately, cultivate a sustainable movement based on a network of locally-based, sustainable, free universities. We believe that this conference can help us to successfully undertake this task through a three-step process.

Step one: history. An intrinsic element of building sustainability today must surely be to learn from the history of previous projects of popular, democratic and radical education here in the UK, and beyond. Therefore, we invite representatives of each free university to conduct and present research into the history of these traditions in their specific locality, drawing on their own particular influences. Researchers should keep in mind the practical purpose driving this research and consider issues such as: Who participated in these efforts? How were they structured, organised, and sustained? What was the significance of their historical and spatial context? What lessons can be derived from these efforts for our own endeavours today?

We hope that this shared research effort will allow us to both map out a history of popular / democratic / radical higher education in the UK, and to identify ways these can inform our own current projects. Ultimately, this collaborative research endeavour could also help us trace the roots of our network.

Step two: dialogue. The next step is to engage in dialogue with one another, and with our histories. We need to both imagine our ideals and talk freely and openly about the challenges and obstacles that impede our ambitions and objectives today. We need to name the material, social and subjective conditions that constrain the actualisation of our imagination and hopes. At the conference, we aim to draw on our collective experiences in democratic education to create a supportive, democratic space in which participants feel able to share their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in these areas.

Step three: practice. Finally, we need to take the lessons and ideas derived from our historical research and dialogue and put them into practice. The conference will culminate in a session in which we all make plans for practical action to take things forward on a local and national level
Affinities and collaborations

We invite collaboration and co-operation with all. Beyond the Free University Network itself, we particularly welcome collaboration from members of the following groups:

Academic members of the ‘For a Public University’ working group and Campaign for the Public University. We at FUN have not forsaken the mainstream university, and many of our members are not only academics or students, but also active in defending the public university. We recognise the rich traditions of critical pedagogy within the university and the enduring possibilities of its democratic promise. We welcome contributions from all academics.

Members of the Co-operative Movement. Clearly, the co-operative model of organisation offers much for free universities today to draw on, and at least one in the UK is explicitly organised upon co-operative principles. We welcome members of the Co-operative Movement who might contribute to our historical and contemporary understanding of co-operative education, and/or who would like to build bridges between these two movements.

University workers who are not academics. All too often, non-academic staff working in universities are marginalised within or excluded from these discussions. Their contributions, knowledges, experiences and possibilities are overlooked. We seek to redress this situation and invite all those making invaluable contributions to higher education in ways that are not specifically ‘academic’ to participate in this conference.

Students and all those desiring to learn. Critical pedagogy aspires to break down hierarchical boundaries between students and teachers, and to expand the right of learning to everyone whether they occupy the role of ‘student’ or not. In the democratic universities we envisage, students shape their own learning experiences. We welcome contributions from students, past, present, and future.

All others who share our principles, and who are active in creating alternative institutions in other areas of social life, particularly in education. There is much we can learn from each other.

An open, democratic, egalitarian, anti-elitist intellectuality

This is a critical pedagogical and political project. This conference is not intended to be a typical academic conference based exclusively on theoretically dense papers and presentations. There is validity, truth, importance, and profound insight in many other methods and ways of expressing knowledge, and we open our conference and minds to these. We believe that narrative – telling stories – is a particularly important means for reaching the personal and social heart of the obstacles and challenges that confront us in our ambitions to create democratic and sustainable learning communities.
Where and when

In the spirit of the Occupy movement, we have decided to host this conference on higher education in Oxford for obvious historical reasons.

We propose that the conference will be held on the weekend of 1–2 December 2012.
We recognise the high cost of transport and accommodation and ask those in a position to do so to offer contributions to help unwaged participants to attend. A system will be created to make this transparent and possible.
Impact and output

Only joking! 

We want this conference to be the turning point at which we really begin to cultivate a sustainable and flourishing free university movement. We hope you can join us for this conference.

If you are interested in participating in the conference and/or in its planning of and preparation, please contact either Sarah Amsler (samsler@lincoln.ac.uk) or Joel Lazarus (joel_lazarus@hotmail.com).

We aim to have a coordinating committee established by 13 August.
Venue
The location of the conference venue will depend on final numbers. However, what is certain is that this conference’s organisation will be guided by fully inclusive principles. This means a family friendly venue with park/playground nearby and a safe indoor space for children of all ages to play. Childcare duties will not preclude participation at this conference. Equally, we will ensure that the venue is fully accessible and that all dietary requirements are catered for. Please contact us if you have any concerns, ideas, or requests. "

The Creative University and Paulo Freire

THE CREATIVE UNIVERSITY – FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Faculty of Education, Office of Teaching and Learning, Waikato University

School of Creative Arts, James Cook University

THE CREATIVE UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE

Hosted by

Universityof Waikato, Te Whare Wananga O Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

15-16 August, 2012

First Call for Papers

Deadline for submission:

Abstracts due: May 1st 2012

Full papers due: July 1st 2012


Education and research have been transformed in the development of knowledge economies. The knowledge, learning and creative economies manifest the changing significance of intellectual capital and the thickening connections between on one hand economic growth, on the other hand knowledge, creativity (especially imagined new knowledge, discovery), the communication of knowledge, and the formation and spreading of creative skills in education. Increasingly economic and social activity is comprised by the ‘symbolic’ or ‘weightless’ economy with its iconic, immaterial and digital goods. This immaterial economy includes new international labour markets that demand analytic skills, global competencies and an understanding of markets in tradeable knowledges. Developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) not only define globalisation they are changing the format, density and nature of the exchange and flows of knowledge, research and scholarship. Delivery modes in education are being reshaped. Global cultures are spreading in the form of knowledge and research networks. Openness and networking, cross-border people movement, flows of capital, portal cities and littoral zones, and new and audacious systems with worldwide reach; all are changing the conditions of imagining and producing and the sharing of creative work in different spheres. The economic aspect of creativity refers to the production of new ideas, aesthetic forms, scholarship, original works of art and cultural products, as well as scientific inventions and technological innovations. It embraces open source communication as well as commercial intellectual property.

All of this positions education at the centre of the economy/ creativity nexus. But are education systems, institutions, assumptions and habits positioned and able so as to seize the opportunities and meet the challenges?

This conference investigates all the aspects of education in (and as) the creative economy.The conference objective is to extend the dialogue about the relationship between contemporary higher education and the changing face of contemporary economies. A number of terms describe the nature of the contemporary capitalism of advanced economies: ‘cognitive capitalism’, ‘metaphysical capitalism’, ‘intellectual capitalism’, ‘designer capitalism’. The conference will explore the relationship between the arts and sciences and this new form of capitalism. It will look at the global reach and international imperatives of aesthetic and scientific modes of production, the conditions and character of acts of the imagination in the range of fields of knowledge and arts in this period, and the role of the research university in the formation of the creative knowledge that has a decisive function in contemporary advanced economies.

Please send title and abstract as an expression of interest to Professor Michael A. Peters: mpeters@waikato.ac.nz

Details at: http://tcreativeu.blogspot.co.uk/p/first-call-for-papers.html

The Creative University: http://tcreativeu.blogspot.co.uk


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PAULO FREIRE: THE GLOBAL LEGACY


A Celebration of Freire’s 91st Birthday

A major international conference, Hamilton, New Zealand, November 26-28, 2012

A major international conference hosted by the University of Waikato, Te Whare Wananga o Waikato, New Zealand, November 26-28, 2012, will be held at the Novotel Hamilton Tainui Hotel on the banks of the Waikato River, in central Hamilton.

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The University of Waikato, Te Whare Wananga oWaikatois delighted to be hosting a major international conference, “Paulo Freire: The Global Legacy” as a retrospective celebration of his work and its legacy and influence across the globe.

The University of Waikato, with a student population of about 13,000 and 2000 academic and support staff, is committed to delivering a world-class education and research portfolio, providing a full and dynamic university experience, distinctive in character, and pursuing strong international links to advance knowledge.

The University works closely with Maori tribes (iwi), particularly Tainui, to make the University accessible to Maori students and to foster an environment of success. http://www.waikato.ac.nz/maori/
& http://www.waikato.ac.nz/about/ & http://www.waikato.ac.nz/

Paulo Freire, one of the greatest educators of all time, was born in Recife, Brazil, on September 19, 1921 and died of heart failure in Sao Paulo, Brazil on May 2, 1997. Freire taught Portuguese in secondary schools from 1941-1947 before becoming active in adult education and workers’ training. He was the first Director of the Department of Cultural Extension of the University of Recife(1961-1964). Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) is an argument for a system of education that emphasizes learning as an act of culture and freedom. His works became justly famous as he gained an international reputation for his program of literacy education especially for the rural and dispossessed in Northeastern Brazil. He was jailed by the new government after 1964 and was forced into a political exile that lasted fifteen-years, eventually returning to Brazil in 1979. As a living testimony, his many works have been translated into many languages, and have inspired the tradition of critical pedagogy.

The conference is aimed at experienced and new researchers, policy-makers and practitioners from all around the world who engage with Freire’s work in any of the following broad themes that the conference will be organized around:
· Globalization
· De-colonisation
· Indigenous cultures
· Cultural studies
A Stream in Portuguese is planned for Portuguese speaking delegates to present and discuss their research in Portuguese. Abstracts will be available in both English and Portuguese. Dr Ana Ratto, from Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil, who is Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Education at University of Waikato, in 2012 is coordinating this stream which will take place on Tuesday 27 November 2012.

For further information, contact ratto.ana@gmail.com