Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference
Description
Making hope possible': creating a ‘loop of learning’ from the streets to the academy and back
The paper would take as its point of departure for discussion my research involving creating a trajectory
of democratic, critical education from social movements, in my case Occupy London, through a variety
of cooperative and community based initiatives and into the university – and of course, back again –
creating a ‘loop of learning’ from each other. As my work involved using a bricolage methodology,
discussion would also include thinking about ways to use research as a tool to create more solidarity
cycles for popular education. Radicalising research is necessary in order to develop alliances and
strategic collaborations, ensure that education remained a political site of slippage, both in‐ and outside
the academy and create publicly useful research. To create a subversive, reinvigorated, and radicalised
critical pedagogy we must begin to think about more innovative and creative ways to engage activists
and communities with our research. This would allow the destabilisation of neoliberal agendas and
create the possibilities and capacities for people to become effective change agents and move from the
notion of the public intellectual toward an intellectual public.