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Conference, News

Education – business as (un)usual?

Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
Footscray, Melbourne

Thursday November 22, 3.30-5.00pm

This session will challenge the current but restricting mainstream understanding of why and how education should be provided.

Beginning with a presentation by Peter Alsen, Education – business as (un)usual? Teaching and Learning Beyond the Mainstream, this forum will address the current notion of educational objectives residing in a mindset of getting everyone ready to enter the workforce. Secondly, that education will improve and advance if there is a marketplace of options someone can choose from. It will put forward a case for education beyond an area of competition, with teaching and learning as an economic transaction.

This will be followed by the Pop Up School and Knowledge Project presentation and forum with Mary Dixon and Karen Charman, outlining the ongoing project to assert learning and knowledge as local, community-based, and grounded in a notion of place. This project also seeks to document and offer an alternative understanding of ‘curriculum’ specific to each locality.

This session is part of:

Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
November 22-23
Footscray, Melbourne

Register for the conference here

Conference, News

Creative Body Based Learning

Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
Footscray, Melbourne

Thursday November 22, 1.30pm

Creative Body Based Learning (CBL) is a method that utilises arts based strategies to mobilise the aesthetic, cognitive and affective domains of participants. This workshop led by Belinda MacGill will use CBL strategies with participants to explore the affordances of public pedagogy and ways in which to mobilise arts based strategies in public sites.

Using embodied arts pedagogies to promote engagement (Dawson and Lee 2018) through meaning making strategies is a creative response to advance the power of collective community knowledge in the public sphere.

This workshop is underpinned by relational aesthetics through co-construction that will culminate in a set of strategies for participants to mobilise in their own sites.

Belinda MacGill is a lecturer, artist and researcher at University of South Australia. Her primary research interests draw on the fields of Indigenous education, postcolonial theory, visual methodologies, arts pedagogy (Dawson 2013) and critical race theory.

This session is part of:

Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
November 22-23
Footscray, Melbourne

Register for the conference here

Conference, News

The Public and Touch

November 22-23
Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
Footscray, Melbourne

This special program will take place over two days, beginning with a panel discussion on Thursday at 3.30pm, that invites you to join the conversation on the theme of The Public and Touch with the program creators: Raffaele Rufo, Paul Carter, Maya Ward, Elian Sellanes, Clare Walton, Merinda Kelly, Soraya Mobayad, Shelley Hannigan.

An ecological sensibility runs through the group, and so does a sensibility to the issues of migration, coloniality and the embodied imageries of indigenous Australia. The contributors to this session are creative practice-led researchers, and writers or creators of bodily or musical or visual performances.

There is a common thread with the potential for collaboration, discovery and change, as ways of finding and changing the place of our body in the material fabrics of the world.

This program will include presentations, exhibition, performance, workshop, and screenings.

This session is part of:

Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
November 22-23
Footscray, Melbourne

Register for the conference here

Conference, News

The Story of the Disability Pride Mural in Footscray

Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
November 22-23
Footscray, Melbourne

Social Activism and Public Pedagogies
Thursday November 22, 1.30-3.00pm

The Disability Pride mural project was led by Larissa MacFarlane and created by a large team of contributing artists. Barely a week after hundreds of hours were spent putting up the mural, the creators were shocked to find it had been removed.

Presenters Debbie Qadri and Larissa MacFarlane will tell the extraordinary story of the Disability Pride Mural in Footscray (the first of its kind in Australia), of its accidental removal . . . days later, and subsequent re-instatement!

This presentation will explore the meanings of the mural for the artists involved in making it, as well as how the art creates public pedagogy reflecting diverse experiences of disability.

View the Mural:
If you get a chance while at the conference or on your way, please take a look at the mural. It is located between Footscray Station and the Campus at:

Telstra Exchange building, 201 Nicholosn St Footscray
Google Map

For more information about the mural see:
https://melbournefringe.com.au/event/disability-pride-is-back/

Continuing the theme of social activism this presentation will be followed by:

Activist Art as Embodied Public Pedagogy for Social Change
by Shalin Krieger

Social Movement as Public Pedagogy: The Case of Adivasis
by Alankrita Chhikara

This session will include both a local and international focus around activist art, social movements, and public spaces.

This session is part of:

Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
November 22-23
Footscray, Melbourne

Register for the conference here

Conference, News

Visual Thinking Strategies and Public Pedagogies

Visual Thinking Strategies:
Presentation and workshop
Friday November 23, 2018, 3.30-5pm
Public Pedagogies Conference

This session will begin with the presentation Making Thinking Visible in Public Spaces by Noeleen Curran, exploring Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) as a public pedagogy, with a focus primarily on informal institutions and public spaces that teach the public and engage the community.

VTS is a research-based construct that has proven to be effective in developing critical thinking and communication skills using art, on location at art gallery spaces. This presentation It will explore the value of utilising VTS to facilitate public pedagogical processes in its capacity to engage observation, provide evidence to support that observation, active listening, and being open to other viewpoints and interpretations. By exploring public venues and places to construct meaning, advances in a ‘public curriculum’ in which participants become their own ‘curriculum coordinators’, supports a powerful facilitated and self-constructed public pedagogy.

Noeleen Curran is a visual arts educator based in Adelaide, currently working at University of South Australia. She engages preservice teachers in The Arts curriculum as an integrative methodology and espouses the value of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to support learning in the classroom and as a public pedagogy. She is currently the Secretary of Visual Arts Educators of South Australia Inc. (VAESA) and recently led a breakout session at the recent VAESA Winter Conference, sharing her knowledge and experience of VTS as a public pedagogy.

The presentation will be followed by an Introduction to Visual Thinking Strategies workshop with Christine Healey in which participants will engage in a VTS ‘conversation’, placing themselves in the position as learner. VTS uses facilitated discussion to practice respectful, democratic, collaborative problem-solving. Through this shared experience and debrief, workshop participants will gain personal insight into this pedagogy and its application.

Christine Healey is Curator Education and Community Learning at the Incinerator Gallery, Moonee Ponds and an experienced Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) facilitator, coach and trainer. Christine initially trained in VTS in New York (2012), followed with two fellowships at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (2013) and again as a guest of Independent Schools Victoria (2016). Christine introduced VTS and the VTS school partnerships into Australian contexts whilst Education Manager at Heide Museum of Modern Art. Christine’s formal qualifications include an MA Arts Management, RMIT University, Grad. Dip Ed. (Visual Arts), Uni Melb and Bachelor Fine Arts (Photography), Victorian College of the Arts and current Ph.D candidate at RMIT University. She is vice-president of Education Network Victoria (ENVI) and a 2013 Melbourne Boston Sister Cities fellow. Twitter: @ChristineHealey

This session is part of:

Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018
November 22-23
Footscray, Melbourne

Register for the conference here

Conference, News

Conference Registrations

Transmissions—knowledges and public spaces

2018 Public Pedagogies Institute Conference
November 22-23, Footscray, Melbourne

Click here to register for the Conference

Click here to register for the Conference Dinner

Registrations are now open for the 2018 Public Pedagogies Institute Conference.

The annual conference features a range of presentations and workshops across the diverse field of public pedagogies and is open to participants from many sectors.

Keynote Speakers 2018

Jake Burdick, Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies
at Purdue University
Charlotte Courtois, Artist and founder of French association Konstelacio

Conference, News

Activist Public Pedagogies for the Post-Truth Moment

We are very excited to share the abstract for Jake Burdick’s Keynote presentation for the 2018 Public Pedagogies Institute conference:

Beneath Reason:
Activist Public Pedagogies for the Post-Truth Moment

The contemporary cultural and political landscape across the globe has been characterized as post-truth, a term that signifies both the ascendance of ideology-as-knowledge and the outright dismissal of any claims stemming from intellectualism, inquiry, or empirical evidence that does not align with the dominant position. As such, spaces of formal education, which trade heavily in these currencies of knowledge, have lost much of their effectiveness as sites of questioning and resistance. In this talk, I provide a brief overview of the post-truth moment and its seduction of educational spaces, and to respond, I discuss approaches to activist public pedagogies and historical knowledge traditions that have operated beyond reason-based forms of critique and protest. Bringing these concepts into dialogue, I discuss how we might reconceptualize activism via its affective, embodied, imaginative, and aesthetic approaches to ethical living and cultural difference.

Jake Burdick will be the Keynote speaker on Day One of the Public Pedagogies Institute Conference on November 22, 2018.

Transmissions—knowledges and public spaces
Public Pedagogies Institute Conference 2018 
November 22-23, Footscray, Melbourne

Learn more

News, Research

Call For Papers: Walking in/as Publics

Call For Papers
Journal of Public Pedagogies
Special Issue: Walking in/as Publics
Guest Edited by WalkingLab
(Stephanie Springgay & Sarah E. Truman)
https://walkinglab.org/journal-of-public-pedagogies-special-issue

As a research methodology, walking has a diverse and extensive history in the social sciences, arts, and humanities underscoring its value for conducting research that is situated, relational, and material. However, the history and genealogy of walking is encumbered by the figure of the flâneur that is predicated on autonomy, ability, Whiteness, masculinity, and as such a capacity to walk anywhere detached from the immediate surroundings. As a result, it is imperative that current activations of walking methods take into consideration race, gender, sexuality, disability, and settler colonization.

Public pedagogy is used to describe processes as diverse as dominant discourses such as neo-liberalism (Giroux, 2004), informal/anomalous sites of learning, (Ellsworth, 2004), corporate branding (Kincheloe, 2002), Disney (Garlen & Sandlin, 2016), civic engagement (Hickey-Moody, 2013), public realms (Biesta, 2010), and movement in public spaces such as streets (Truman, 2017). While public pedagogy can be said to refer to the educational, cultural and social affects and effects of prevailing culture, Sandlin, Burdick and O’Malley (2011) use the term critical public pedagogy to describe the ways popular and everyday culture(s) can be used to “decode and interrupt dominant ideologies of race, class, gender, sexuality, militarism, and neo-liberalism” (p. 347). Critical public pedagogy is an apt term to describe critical walking methods and methodologies.

This special issue is guest edited/curated by WalkingLab (www.walkinglab.org). WalkingLab is co-directed by Stephanie Springgay and Sarah E. Truman. WalkingLab is committed to queer, feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial walking practices. See their recent publication Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human-World: WalkingLab (Routledge, 2018).

The expected publication date will accompany the annual Public Pedagogies Institute Conference in Melbourne, Australia (November 2019). At this point WalkingLab invites proposals for submissions that activate walking methods and methodologies and specifically attend to race, gender, sexuality, disability and settler colonization in/as public. Each 250-word proposal should provide a title for the submission, explain a theoretical orientation, and a brief explanation of content, arguments, and walking practice that will be examined. Proposals should indicate if the final submission will be a full-length article or a shorter explication text (see below). If you include images in your proposal please embed these into your word document and then send the submission as a pdf. Include no more than 3 images at this time. Please include a permission statement that indicates that you have the copyright permission to include images in your publication. Please include a 50-word bio.

Final submissions can be:
• full length articles (5,000 to 6,000 exclusive of references) that theoretically and/or empirically attend to walking methodologies (these will be double blind peer reviewed)
• short texts (1000 to 1500 words) that explicate a particular walking practice(s) or events
• photo essays with short descriptions/theorizations

The journal is an open source online journal that currently publishes the papers as pdf files. Images and URL links can be included in submissions. All proposals will be submitted electronically as word documents (or pdf if including images), using APA citation format, and images. Submit proposals and queries to: walkingpublicpedagogy@gmail.com

Deadlines:
October 15, 2018: Proposal/expression of interest (250 words plus 50-word bio)
November 1, 2018 authors will be notified of acceptance of their proposal
February 1, 2019 final submissions due for blind peer review

Journal of Public Pedagogies Special Issue

News

Learning on the Edge

Discover the wonders of learning in unconventional ways through a series of mind-expanding interactive events in Footscray from 16 – 17 November.

Learning on the Edge is an inaugural two-day program developed by Victoria University in collaboration with Victoria University Polytechnic, Maribyrnong City Council and community partners that offers unique learning and knowledge exchange opportunities for everyone.

Featuring six unique events at locations across Footscray, Learning on the Edge puts a twist on everyday experiences by encouraging participants to get out of their comfort zones.

Have a one-on-one conversation with renowned international street artist, Heesco, authors Anna Krien (Night Games) and Enza Gandolfo (The Bridge), the owner of the Sun Theatre and 2016 Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Michael Smith, or Sudanese-Australian former refugee Akuol Garang.

Watch a debate unfold between ABC radio broadcaster Sami Shah and local secondary school students, or see life in Footscray through scientists’ eyes with Triple R’s Einstein A Go Go host Dr Shane Huntington and a panel of VU academics.

What happens when you meet someone new without seeing them? Have a guided conversation with a stranger in the dark to find out.

Explore the traditions behind Footscray’s famously diverse food scene in a special two-course meal at an Ethiopian, Sudanese or Vietnamese restaurant.

On Saturday 17 November, VU’s Nicholson Street Campus will be transformed into a Skills Street, where participants can learn something new in 60 minutes – from 4D printing and spinning records, to reupholstering furniture and repurposing left over kitchen products.

Visit footscraylearningontheedge.com to book tickets and find out more.

Pop Up School

Point Cook Pop Up School

Coming up on September 1, 2018 our next Pop Up School will take place in Point Cook!

Our Pop Up Schools are created in the communities in which they take place to present and share the unique learning and teaching that exists in each location.

This event will showcase many exhibitions of learning and teaching, from the past, present and future from Point Cooks’ community members. The days activities will include music, dancing, story telling, games and much more.

No bookings required. All welcome!

From 12.00 onwards there will be stalls and workshops to visit and performances to watch.

Follow Facebook @wynlearnfestival for more details.

DATE
TIME
LOCATION
Basketball Court opposite Target Car Park, Point Cook Town Centre, Off Murnong St, Point Cook
Visit Website
COST
FREE