The Institute launched the new issue of the Journal of Public Pedagogies on Thursday November 23 at the conclusion of the first day of our conference.
The new issue features articles by Belinda MacGill, Yayan Rahayani, John G. Fox, Debbie Qadri, Raffaele Rufo, Karen Charman , Mary Dixon, Robin Bellingham, Matthew Thomas, Jayson Cooper and Greg Giannis.
The range of articles in the issue again captures the diverse work that is taking place today in the area of public pedagogies.
When the Public Pedagogies Institute conference is over on Friday you can head straight on out for One Night in Footscray…
Discover the art spaces, galleries, venues and hidden in-between spaces within the local area. Exhibitions, live music, performance and participatory art installations collide for one night in a free program that has something for people of all ages.
One Night in Footscray highlights the work of local artists, makers, emerging practitioners and students, to create new opportunities to encounter art in public spaces and the ways in which people experience and interpret Footscray, its people and places.
This program is a Footscray University Town initiative supported by Victoria University and Maribyrnong City Council.
Friday 24 November, 5PM ’til late
Check out the program at the link below:
Recently a delegation from Public Pedagogies Institute attended the Manchester Metropolitan University’s 5th International Summer Institute in Qualitative Research: Putting Theory to Work (10th July – 14th July 2017). This biannual conference enables a unique opportunity for researchers from all over the world and disciplines to meet, learn and talk about theory as it relates to the work we do as researchers.
Throughout the event we engaged with various ways to engage and interact with theory. With a mix of keynote presentations, smaller group presentations and artistic responses to provocations that promoted the folding in of theory into creative output. These daily experiences promoted socially constructed art works that fold in and through each other; through discourse, arts methods and theoretical statements that ask ‘what happens when we think theoretical concepts in intra-action with materials and art-based propositions?’
A range of theoretical discussions where engaged with through the variety of forums that were pedagogically rich democratic and polyphonic. Many voices from across the globe that came together to teach and learn found in the heart of Manchester, UK.
Mary Dixon, Karen Charman, Matthew Thomas and Jayson Cooper attended on behalf of the Public Pedagogies Institute where they shared a presentation that wove their voices and experiences together to create a tapestry of pedagogical discussions from being involved in the Public Pedagogies Institute’s 2016 Footscray Pop Up School. They each gave a 20 minute presentation that together sang the polyphonic nature of the Pop Up school. Speaking a new educational experience (a growing theoretical understanding of education consciousness) each of the presentations expressed the theoretical as it was put into practice through this one day event.
Exploring the plural pedagogical aims of local communities and the enrichments that come from such dialogue, the PPI presentation promoted wide discussion on public pedagogy, Australian identity and community expression.
Recently the Public Pedagogies Institute held a Pop Up School in Station Place Werribee on September 1, 2017. This event showcased the breadth of knowledge in the Werribee Community. The Institute was invited to curate this event as the key activity to launch the annual Wyndham Learning Festival.
Like its predecessor the Footscray Pop Up School, the Werribee project has also consisted of interviews with members of the Werribee community around the theme of significant knowledge in Werribee. These interviews will continue into the new year and will be published as ‘Toward a Werribee Curriculum.’
Discussion is now under way for a similar project in Point Cook in 2018. If you are interested in a Pop Up School in your suburb or town please contact the Public Pedagogies Institute.
Our friends at MetroWest have an upcoming event that may be of interest and they are offering grants for artists to participate:
Apply now for an artist’s grant to exhibit or perform at ‘One Night in Footscray’ in 2017!
‘One Night in Footscray‘ is a new and exciting platform to discover the art spaces, galleries and venues within central Footscray. It is designed as a self-guided twilight journey through central Footscray. Audiences and participants will be able to view and engage in a variety of high-quality art experiences, across different mediums and unexpected locations – all on one night.
The event aims to:
Our next Pop Up School is coming up this year at Station Place, Werribee on Friday September 1, 2017, from 1pm – 6pm.
An ongoing project of the Public Pedagogies Institute, the Pop Up School initiative is designed to create community events that explore learning and teaching located in specific places and locations. The project is supported by research into how knowledge is perceived and valued geographically.
We look forward to a great day of activities, performances, exhibitions and celebration in Werribee!
The Public Pedagogies Institute is very excited to announce the Keynote Speaker for our 2017 conference will be Margaret Wertheim, of the Crochet Coral Reef project and the
Institute For Figuring.
Margaret Wertheim is an internationally noted writer, artist and curator whose work focuses on relations between science and the wider cultural landscape. The author of six books including “The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace,” a history of space from Dante to the Internet, and “Physics on the Fringe,” she has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Aeon and many others. With her twin sister Christine she founded the Institute For Figuring, a Los Angeles-based practice devoted to the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science and mathematics. (theiff.org.) Through the IFF, she has created exhibitions for the Hayward Gallery (London), Science Gallery (Dublin), MASS MoCA (MA), and Art Center College of Design (Los Angeles). The Wertheim sisters’ Crochet Coral Reef project is the largest participatory art & science endeavor in the world, and has been shown at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Deutsches Museum (Munich), the Smithsonian (Washington D.C.), and elsewhere. Margaret’s reef TED talk has been viewed more than a million times and translated into 22 languages. In 2016, she was granted the AxS Award from the Pasadena Arts Council, for contributions to art and science, and the American Association of Physics Teachers award for public science communication – the first woman to given this honor in 10 years. She has been a Discovery Fellow at the University of Southern California (2012) and a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne (2015), and is currently a Phd. candidate at Deakin University.
Margaret’s presentation will be based on the following:
Art, Science and Figuring the World
Welsh writer Merrily Harpur has written that: “the duty of artists everywhere is to enchant the conceptual landscape.” It may not be the duty of scientists to produce conceptual enchantment, but in this talk Margaret Wertheim will propose that this is one of the goals scientists and mathematicians achieve. In 2003, Wertheim founded the Institute For Figuring, a Los Angeles-based enterprise with her artist-twin-sister Christine that’s dedicated to “the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.” The IFF can be conceived of as a “play tank” – a new kind of practice for exploring creative public engagement with topics ranging from geometry and topology, to physics, computation, and biological form. Here, Wertheim will discuss how imaginative speculative play practices can provide insight into the realms of math and science for citizens of all ages. From a worldwide project to model coral reefs using the art of crochet, to building giant fractals from tens of thousands of brightly colored business cards, Wertheim’s work offers experiences for playing with ideas.
Find out more:
Crochet Coral Reef
The Institute for Figuring
Public Pedagogies Institute Conference
Turning Learning Upside Down
Footscray, Melbourne
November 23 – 24 , 2017
Visiting Scholar Associate Professor Jennifer A. Sandlin from Arizona State University, will be giving a public lecture on Thursday June 29, 2017:
‘The Politics of Affect: Policing and Colonizing Anger in Disney’s Zootopia’
The is a free event and all Institute members are encouraged to attend.
Date: June 29
Time: 4 – 6pm
Location: VU at MetroWest, 138 Nicholson Street, Footscray
The College of Arts and Education at Victoria University have sponsored Dr Sandlin’s visit. Professor Rob Strathdee, Dean of the College of Arts and Education at Victoria University will be a guest at the lecture.
Associate Professor Jennifer A. Sandlin will also be presenting the Masterclass in Public Pedagogy for the Institute while she is in Australia.
The Politics of Affect: Policing and Colonizing Anger in Disney’s Zootopia
Associate Professor Jennifer A. Sandlin, Arizona State University
In this talk I focus on The Walt Disney Company’s recent hit animated film, Zootopia, which can be read as a commentary on the police state, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the policing of affect, particularly anger. I argue that Zootopia preserves and perpetuates whiteness, racialization, and dehumanization through the modulation and sanctioning of particular feelings. I problematize the film’s pathologization of rage not only because it disavows the productive and constructive uses to which anger and rage can be put, but also because it biologizes rage. Finally, I call for developing pedagogies attuned to affect in order to confront racialized state violence and the racializing assemblages that prop up ongoing white supremacist injustice, and argue that we must attend to how anger can be a form of moral protest and political outrage.
Date: June 29
Time: 4 – 6pm
VU at MetroWest, 138 Nicholson Street, Footscray
Last week we held our PPI General Meeting in Geelong. It was the first of our three meetings where we leave the suburb of Footscray!
Part of this meeting was enacting public pedagogy. In this instance we undertook a walk in Corio Norlane in Geelong. Amanda Stirrat and Tina Grimes have worked with community and school groups to develop Knowing your Place 3214 Walks. We only walked a short distance but in the space of this learnt an enormous amount about Norlane over time.
The experience was really amazing and Amanda, who spoke the significance of the area as we walked, alerted us to the specificities of geographical spaces… instances of architecture, seemingly vacant land, the significance of industry, lost football fields, indigenous connections to the land and the bay, and memory and place.
Amanda’s work is enacting public pedagogy in and around Geelong and I can’t speak more highly of her. I encourage you to take one of the walks. And as you will see by the images, we ended up in a very cool location for the formal part of our meeting!
Public Pedagogies Institute invites submissions for consideration in the next issue of the Journal of Public Pedagogies, to be published in November 2017.
The Journal of Public Pedagogies is a peer-reviewed publication of the Public Pedagogies Institute, published online by the Institute in conjunction with Victoria University. The journal publishes research in learning and teaching that extends beyond the boundaries of traditional or formal educational institutions.
Submissions are invited for articles of 3000-5000 words. Please submit your articles prepared for blind review, with name and contact information on a separate page. Articles should be formatted in 12 pt, double line spaced (with no indents or formatting), using the Harvard Referencing Style. ( For referencing details please follow the Victoria University Harvard Guide. )
Images should be attached separately as jpeg or png files (please submit low resolution images for review, with high resolution versions to be made available upon request for publication).
Submissions will be accepted until June 30, 2017, however you are encouraged to contact us with your intention to submit prior to the deadline.
For further information or to submit your article, please contact Karen Charman.
The Journal can be accessed at the Victoria University site or at the link below.
