Serendipitous Moments: Higher Education

Showing posts with label Higher Education. Show all posts

Thursday, 18 August 2016

Reviewing Our History and Making Plans: The Social Science Centre - Lincoln

REVIEWING OUR HISTORY AND MAKING PLANS

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE CENTRE

LINCOLN

Saturday 27th August 2016

10.00 – 4.00

St. Swithin’s Community Centre

Croft Street

Lincoln

LN2 5AZ

Location: https://goo.gl/5Q5NNl

St. Swithin’s Community Centre: http://www.stswithinscroftstreet.org.uk/

The Social Science Centre (SSC), Lincoln is hosting an event to look back at its activities since it was founded in 2011 and to make plans for its future.

10:00–12:00: SSC on Reflection, 2011–2016 (SSC members only)

A chance for all past and present members of the Social Science Centre to reflect on their experiences in the Centre, our activities, roads we have not taken, changes we should make and hopes for the future. Highlights to be shared with others later in the day.

12:30–1:30: Lunch (Public, everyone welcome)

Please join us for lunch!

1:30–4:00: Co-operative Higher Education in Lincoln (Public, all welcome)

Ideas and making plans for the term/year. It has already been suggested we run courses on Brexit and the co-operative movement in Lincoln and the UK

What is the SSC?

The SSC organises higher education that explores the everyday experiences of its members – who are both students and teachers – through concepts and ideas developed in the social sciences. This includes making critical sense of social problems (like ‘austerity’, racism and nationalism or the privatisation of schools) and important local and global events like ‘Brexit’, learning how they affect us and how we might have an effect on them. Our past courses – The Social Science Imagination, Co-operation and Education, and Know How: Do-It-Ourselves Higher Education – all offered different approaches to this learning.

We are a co-operative organisation that is owned and run by our members. This means that we not only have an experience of higher education, but can decide together what this education should be, how it works and why it matters. All our members can help run the Centre by taking part in democratic decision-making processes and collective ownership and responsibility. No one pays for learning or gets paid for teaching at the SSC because we do not believe knowledge should be for sale. Members with financial means make small monthly contributions to the co-operative to pay for room hire and other running costs.

For more information about the SSC, visit our website: http://socialsciencecentre.org.uk

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

An Alternative to Neo-Liberal Education - Venue Change!

AN ALTERNATIVE TO NEO-LIBERAL EDUCATION

NEW ANARCHIST RESEARCH GROUP

JOINT MEETING WITH THE SOCIAL SCIENCE CENTRE (LINCOLN)

Saturday 28 November 2015

2.00 pm - 4.30pm

VENUE CHANGE

NOW AT THE MAYDAY ROOMS

Apologies for the short notice but unfortunately it has been necessary to change the venue for the meeting on Saturday 28 November. This will now be held in the MAYDAY ROOMS, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH, 2.00pm – 4.30pm.

The Social Science Centre (SSC) in Lincoln is a self-organised co-operative higher learning provider that is democratic at all levels of its organisation. The scholars who are members of the Centre work and study together whether they are traditionally students or teachers. One of the aims of the Centre is to analyse and dissolve the tensions in the relationships between research and teaching, and students and academics. Set up by academics from the University of Lincoln, the Centre has no relationship with the University, although it is a critique of the formal institution as a dysfunctional neoliberal arrangement in many ways. The SSC aims to ‘reinvent’ the University and transform the scholars’ relationship to knowledge in order to insert their own experiences into theoretical knowledges that aim to emancipate them as active change agents. The SSC engenders provocations, conversations and discussions that enliven the notion that all those who are involved in active knowledge work should become (co-) producers of knowledge. Two of the (student) scholars and an academic from Lincoln will be visiting the Anarchist Research Group to talk about the centre and their experiences studying there.

In this session, we would like to tell you a little about our experiences with the SSC and then invite a discussion on the SSC, self-organised education and the relationships between education, learning, and social change.

The Social Science Centre provides free public higher education in the city of Lincoln and emphasises the collective and collaborative nature of education. The Centre was opened in 2011 by academics and students and Lincoln residents who feel passionately that those wishing to study higher education should not have to take on the burden of debt. There is no fee to pay when joining the Centre, only what you can afford. Free also means freedom to study outside of the current disciplinary structures of higher education around topics and issues that are of direct concern to you and your local community.

ANARCHIST RESEARCH GROUP: Our meetings are friendly and informal. They are usually held on the fourth Saturday each month, at the Torriano Meeting House in Kentish town, 99 Torriano Avenue, London NW5 2RX between 2.00pm and 4.30 pm
Directions: From Kentish Town tube station walk up Leighton Road, and turn left into Torriano Avenue.

We take a collection after each meeting to cover the cost of the venue.

Website: http://torrianomeetinghouse.wordpress.com/where-we-are/

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski