STRATEGIES FOR FREE EDUCATION

We are five artists with a shared sensibility linked closely to critical artistic practice, socio-political accountability and intellectual development. From October 2010 and for an indefinite period of time we are researching, developing, acting upon and disseminating strategies for free education. This process has been brought about through a number of both personal and collective political, financial and ideological motivations. Our activity is an act of resistance, a support structure and a platform for learning, collaboration, debate and action across wide disciplines and networks. Through our activity we acknowledge, respond to or contribute to debate and activity surrounding the wider economic context, the education system and those economies, networks and educational models specific to contemporary art.

We are working through a combination of methodologies which we will develop, evaluate and publish for further examination, appropriation and development by others, including the potentials of:
- self-initiation
- accessing what is freely available
- gate-crashing
- collaboration

We share a collective belief that free education is a right and should be equally accessible to all irrespective of wealth and class. We aim to research, discuss and contribute to the breadth of thinking that contextualises our activity as well as our individual practices, though we do not frame our activity through one theoretical perspective.

“For Freire, pedagogy was central to a formative culture that makes both critical consciousness and social action possible. Pedagogy in this sense connected learning to social change; it was a project and provocation that challenged students to critically engage with the world so they could act on it.”
Henry A. Giroux, 23/11/10, truthout | Op-Ed

Charlotte A. Morgan, Robert Quirk, Daniel Simpkins, Terry Slater and Penny Whitehead.