Alternative (art) education

Ashill, Kathryn (2013). Symposium report: alternative art schools. a-n blog.

Bayerdoerfer, Mirjam and Rosalie Schweiker eds. (2017). Teaching for people who prefer not to teach. AND Publishing.

1000 Little Hammers (2011). Dispatches from the Ruins: Documents and Analyses from University Struggles, Experiments in Self-Education. 1000 Little Hammers.

Bhambra, Gurminder, Dalia Gebrial and Kerem Nisancıoglu (2018). Decolonising the University. London: Pluto Press. Students, activists and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the home of the coloniser, in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, enforcing diversity, and destroying old boundaries, the book offers resources for students and academics to challenge and resist coloniality inside and outside the classroom and provides tools for pedagogical, disciplinary and institutional change.

Bigakkō, Mike Fu, Yamamoto Hiroki eds. (2019). History of Bigakkō from its Founding until 2019, trans. Caroline Mikako Elder, Bunka-cho Art Platform Japan. In Bigakkō 1969-2019: The Free and Experimental Academy. Tokyo: Shobunsha, pp. 56-70. Founded in 1969 by publisher Gendai Shichōsha, the Bigakkō is well-known for its opposition to the mainstream academy system. Still active as of 2022, the school has over the years welcomed a long list of instructors including Matsuzawa Yutaka, Akasegawa Genpei, Aida Makoto, and Ushiro Ryūta (Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group). More archival than analytical, this text offers a firsthand overview of the Bigakkō’s first 50 years. Of particular interest are accounts of the school’s founding in 1969, near-closure (and separation from Gendai Shichōsha) in 1975, as well as descriptions of the school’s instructors and titles of the classes they taught.

Dockray, Sean, Matteo Pasquinelli, Jason Smith and Caleb Waldorf, Public School (2010). There is Nothing Less Passive Than the Act of Fleeing. Journalment #1: Welfare State…ment (on welfare states) (2010).

Five Years (2012). This is Not a School. London: Five Years. Documentation of a diverse programme of events collected by open invitation that responded to the phenomenon of the ‘alternative education project’ in the form of a one-hour ‘participatory activities’ that questioned the ‘Free School’ structure and its wide ranging history and ethos.

Foster, Sesshu (2015). How is the artist or writer to function (survive and produce) in the community, outside of institutions? East Los Angeles Dirigible Transport Lines, 10 July 2015.

Corris, Michael (2012). The Un-artist. Art Monthly 357, June 2012.

Guardiola, Pablo (2023). Unifying Agents: Emancipation and Art Education in the Caribbean RAY | RAYO | RAYON. e-flux Education (Jun 30, 2023). Discusses the economic and political costs of art education for Caribbean artists and argues that the dependency on foreign institutions creates unequal relations, in which Caribbean artists are often forced to become immigrants or second-class citizens in other countries. The article also discusses the challenges of mobility within the Caribbean Basin, which are largely due to colonial structures and the economies associated with tourism. Introduces RAY|RAYO RAYON, an interdisciplinary and experimental art education programme for the Caribbean that is currently under development.

Holland, Pat dir. (1970). The Hornsey Film. UK, 60min. Documentary that reconstructs the arguments and succession of events that led to the occupation of Hornsey College of Art between May and July 1968. 

Jacobi, Silvie (2017). Alternative Art Schools in London: Contested Space and the Emergence of New Modes of Learning in Practice. In Art and the City, Jason Luger and Julie Ren eds. London: Routledge. With the substantial increase of tuition fees in England and Wales in 2012, a number of alternative art schools were set up in London to offer an affordable option to higher education in fine art. While exploring how these schools meet the demand of the art world, the chapter focuses on the complex relationship between space and art practice in determining their educational formats and modes of operation. This includes the discussion around how the schools engage with different local publics and emphasises the role they play in using contested space.

Jahoda, Susan and Caroline Woolard, BFAMFAPhD (2019). Making and Being: Embodiment, Collaboration, and Circulation in the Visual Arts. Brooklyn: Pioneer Works. A framework for teaching art that emphasizes contemplation, collaboration, and political economy. The authors, two visual arts educators and members of the collective BFAMFAPhD, share ideas and teaching strategies that they have adapted to spaces of learning which range from self-organized workshops to Foundation, BFA and MFA thesis classes. Making and Being includes activities, worksheets and assignments in the form of a book, a series of videos, a deck of cards, and an interactive website.

Jakobsen, Jakob and Henriette Heise (2007). WE HAVE WON! Copenhagen Free University.

Jakobsen, Jakob ed. (2012). Antiuniversity of London: Antihistory Tabloid. London: MayDay Rooms.

Jakobsen, Jakob (2013). Pedagogy of Negating the Institution. Mute Magazine (Nov 14, 2013).

Jakobsen, Jakob (2015). The Antiuniversity of London: an Introduction to Deinstitutionalisation. The Antihistory Project.

Jorn, Asger (1995/1957). Notes on the Formation of the Imaginist Bauhaus. In The Situationist International Anthology. Berkley: Bureau of Public Secrets, pp. 23-24.

Holert, Tom (2009). Art in the Knowledge-based Polis. e-flux Journal 3 (Feb 2009).

Koszerek, Pippa (2001). The Independent Art School Conference. Journal of Visual Art Practice Vol. 1/2 (2001), pp. 111-115.

Koszerek, Pippa (2011). Alternative Art Schools. London: a-n The Artist’s Information Company.  Research paper on the background to alternative arts schools and their current relevance, citing historical ideology and using eight case studies. Contemporary issues within art school education, particularly in light of the shift from student as learner to student as consumer. Case studies of alternative art schools particularly relevant since the introduction and then tripling of university college fees.

Lasswell, Mark (1991). True Colors: Tim Rollins’s Odd Life with the Kids of Survival. New York Magazine (Jul 29, 1991).

Lindgren, Jacob ed. (2018). Extra-Curricular. Eindhoven: Onomatopee 163. A reader on self-organised learning, curriculum, experiments, and alternatives in graphic design education. Occurring both within and separate from existing institutions, these other forms of learning and organisation question how such learning takes place, for whom, and the ideologies inherent in existing models. Inspired by the widespread activity and educational turn (or shift) in the field, this book aims to serve as a point of departure for further discussion and experimentation.

Lisker, Roy (1968). The Antiwar Movement in New York City 1965-67. Ferment Magazine / Les Temps Modernes. An account of Lisker’s experience at the Free University of New York and the initial enthusiasm with the trans-disciplinary and self-organised university from Nov 1965 to Summer 1966. Later sectarian politics increasingly marginalised the diversity of the project, with the founders Allen and Sharon Krebs and James Mellon limiting the experimental space in favour of political discipline. They were officers in the Maoist inspired Progressive Labor Party, and this political association became clear after Summer of 1966 where they became outspoken. According to Lisker, FUNY became a Progressive Labor Party institute for the teaching of Maoism.

Manifesto Club (2008). Towards a Free Art School. Manifesto Marathon, Serpentine Gallery (19 Oct 2008). Presented by Doug Fishbone. Formed in 2006, Manifesto Club’s Artistic Autonomy Group was a network of artists, arts administrators, researchers and students who wanted to defend artistic freedom against restrictive policies and practices. Members include JJ Charlesworth, Josie Appleton, Sonya Dyer and Emma Ridgway. The 2007 campaign, Boxed In, addressed diversity schemes in arts funding, and the 2008 report focuses on freedom in art schools. The larger organisation, Manifesto Club, is a pro-human campaigning network based in London. The aim is to bring together individuals who believe in developing people’s creativity and knowledge. Manifesto Club’s agenda is for a 21st-century Enlightenment – to build a future where human potential is developed to the fullest extent possible. Campaigns are developed through discussions, salons, events, petitions essays and reports. (Manifesto Pamphlet, Manifesto Marathon 2008).

Martin, Stewart (2008). Pedagogy of Human Capital. Mute Vol 2, No. 8: Zero Critical Content/No Added Aesthetics (Apr 2008). Post-Fordism’s appetite for self-directed activity is bringing about a crisis in progressive education. No longer perceived as threatening, a work force trained to think for itself has become highly desirable. So what should an emancipatory education entail today?

Maude-Roxby, Alice and Joan Giroux ed. (2014). Anti-Academy. Southampton: John Hansard Gallery. Book, exhibition and symposium that examined the ideas, processes, workshops and legacies of three radical educational models of the 1960s: Bigakkō in Tokyo, Intermedia Program at the University of Iowa, and Ex-School in Copenhagen. Anti-Academy provides an interpretation of how these academies situated themselves on the peripheries of the art world, existing in opposition to the mainstream and responding to the political, social and cultural climate of the day. The publication includes interviews with the artists and their students and contextual essays by Yoshiko Shimada, Jessica Santone, William Marroti, Alice Maude-Robxy and Tania Orum. Bigakkō was founded in 1969 by radical publishing company Gendaischisho sha, and employed the most radical artists of the day. The Intermedia Program was established by artist Hans Breder and invited visiting artists to explore the boundaries between media, genres, artistic and scholarly practices, social and political universes, and between viewer and artist. Ex-School (the Experimental School) was established in 1961 by art-historian Troels Andersen and artist Poul Gernes. Ex-School artists discarded traditional notions of the artist and used various strategies to achieve collective outcomes, advocating a collective anonymity over the pursuit of personal individual careers.

Muhammad, Zarina (2023). Portrait of a Different Kind of Art School. The White Pube (30 Jul 2023).

Opstrup, Kasper (2017). The Anti-University of London. In The Way Out: Invisible Insurrections and Radical Imaginaries in the UK Underground, 1961-1991. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions, pp. 75-95.

Precarious University (2016). Towards A New Concept Of The Art School. Symposium Minutes

Reekum, Rogier van ed. (2015). The New University: A Special Issue on the Future of the University. Krisis journal for contemporary philosophy, Issue 2 (2015). Amsterdam: Stichting Krisis.

Richter, Dorothee and Ronald Kolb eds. (2019). Revisiting Black Mountain: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments and Their Potential for Democratization. OnCurating.org, Issue 43: Revisiting Black Mountain (Dec 2019).

Sealy Thompson, Tonika and Stefano Harney (2018). Ground Provisions. Afterall A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry Vol. 45 (Spring 2018). Tonika Sealy Thompson and Stefano Harney discuss autonomous organisations, black metaphysics and the politics of reading together.

Shimada, Yoshiko (2018). Gendaishicho-sha Bigakko: Alternative Art Education in Post-1968 Japan. Hong Kong: Asia Art Archive (May 2018). Video (1hr, 8min). Artist and researcher Shimada Yoshiko discusses Gendaishicho-sha Bigakkō (1969–75), an alternative art school in Japan. In the aftermath of the 1968 student movement, the radical publishing company Gendaishicho-sha founded Gendaishicho-sha Bigakkō in Tokyo in 1969. Bigakkō was established at a time of great change, and was envisioned by its founder Ishii Kyoji as a “movement to change the world by changing the way the world is perceived”. Shimada introduces two principles of Bigakkō—“tewaza” (hand skills) and close and full “master-pupil” relationships—and how each artist tried to embody these principles in their own unique methodology. By locating Bigakkō in the sociopolitical and cultural context of post-1968 Japan, she suggests ways this experiment in alternative art education for social change could be relevant today, and the kind of new strategies required.

Sollfrank, Cornelia (2013). Expanded Appropriation. GWYDH. Video interview with Sean Dockray on the evolution of Telic Arts Exchange, The Public School and aaaaarg.org, he talks about decision-making and accountability regarding what becomes visible in alternative spaces, file sharing and peer-to-peer distribution among other topics. Giving What You Don’t Have was a research project on the relationship between art and the commons.

Sollfrank, Cornelia (2019). Commoning the Institution – or How to Create an Alternative (Art School), When “There Is No Alternative”. OnCurating.org, Issue 43: Revisiting Black Mountain (Dec 2019), pp. 50-53.

Sollfrank, Cornelia, Felix Stalder and Shusha Niederberger (2021). Aesthetics of the Commons. Zurich: Diaphanes.

Students and Staff of Hornsey College of Art (1969). The Hornsey Affair. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. An account of the student occupation of Hornsey College of Art in May 1968.

Szefer Karlsen, Anne (2012). Self-organisation as Institution? Free School of Art Theory and Practice, Budapest (Jan 2013).

Thorne, Sam (2017). School: A Recent History of Self-Organized Art Education. New York: Sternberg. A chronicle of self-organized art schools and artist-run education platforms that have emerged since 2000. 20 conversations conducted by Thorne with artists, curators and educators from projects in London, Lagos, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Ramallah, Berlin and Saint Petersburg and other locations on student debt, MFA education and the pedagogical turn, with proposals for the future of art education. Contributions by Bik Van der Pol, Bruce High Quality Foundation University, Tania Bruguera, Chto Delat?, Sean Dockray, Olafur Eliasson, Ryan Gander, Piero Golia, Fritz Haeg, Pablo Helguera, Jakob Jakobsen, Ahmet Öğüt, Yoshua Okón, Open School East, Rupert, Wael Shawky, Tina Sherwell, Bisi Silva, Christine Tohme, Anton Vidokle etc.

University for Strategic Optimism (2011). Undressing the Academy, or The Student Handjob. London: Minor Compositions, Brooklyn: Autonomedia.

Waldvogel, Florian, Anton Vidokle and Mai Abu ElDahab eds. (2006). Notes for an Art School. Amsterdam: Manifesta 6 School Books.

Wittwer, Till (2014). ‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish’, Said the Academy and Fed Us to the Lions. Or: Starving With a Lot of Love in Your Stomach. Public Lecture, Parallel School Brno, Brno Biennial (Sep 20, 2014).

Art education

Allen, Felicity (2011). Education. Documents of Contemporary Art. London: Whitechapel Gallery & MIT Press.

Art Monthly (2008). The Future of Art Education Special Issue. Art Monthly #320 (Oct 2008).

ArtReview (2023). Art Schools. ArtReview (9 Mar 2023). Presented as “ArtReview’s new and wide-ranging report on the state of art education today”, this is a collection of guides to alternative art schools in different geographical locations, including South America, North America, East and Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, together with a handful of articles on alternative art schools and art education more generally.

Beck, John and Matthew Cornford (2014). The Art School and the Culture Shed. Kingston Upon Thames: The Centre for Useless Splendour. John Beck and Matthew Cornford have been tracking down and photographing the sites of British art schools for around five years. While many towns in the UK used to have a dedicated art school, now there are only a handful left; most of the buildings have been repurposed or demolished. Instead of educational institutions dedicated to the study of art and design, British towns are now more likely to contain signature gallery and museum buildings intended, in part, to contribute to local regeneration, heritage, and/or tourist agendas. What does the decline of the local art school and the rise of the ‘destination’ art gallery tell us about changing ideas about the function of art, its possible civic purpose, and the relationship between participation and spectatorship? For a copy of the book please contact Dean Kenning. For further information the project email John Beck or Matthew Cornford.

Beech, Dave (2014). Teaching the Unteachable. Art Monthly 377, June 2014, pp. 8-10.

Belzer, Heike and Daniel Birnbaum eds. (2007). Kunst Lehren — Teaching Art. Frankfurt: Städelschule, & Cologne: Walther König. The Frankfurt am Main Stadelschule, and its gallery Portikus, form an international center for experimental contemporary art. This publication is authored by contemporary Stadelschule professors and visiting lecturers, including Pamela Lee, Niklas Maak, Jan Verwoert and Okwui Enwezor, who discuss what teaching art means in the context of a contemporary academy, and at what point the art market should be introduced in a student’s education. It serves as an example of the kind of discourse available to Stadelschule students, as there is always in residence an impressive international cast of artworld practitioners.

Birnbaum, Daniel (2007). The Art of Education. Artforum Vol. 45/10 (Summer 2007), pp. 474-477. Where do art schools stand in relation to recent changes in higher education, where the student has become a customer and education a commodity? As art education is standardised and drawn further into the university system, there is a concern that art school has become a production line: “It’s as though the work that you will produce by the end of the course is pre-ordained in some way”.

Birnbaum, Daniel (2009). Teaching Art: Adorno and the Devil. In Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century), Steven Henry Madoff ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 231–246.

Bourgeois, Vera ed. (2007). Art Mistresses: Between Classrooms and Studio. Cologne: Salon.

Clowes, Daniel (1991). Art School Confidential. Eightball #7 (Nov 1991).

Coatman, Anna (2016). What next for art schools? Times Higher Education (Mar 17, 2016).

De Ville, Nicholas and Stephen Foster ed. (1994). The artist and the academy: issues in fine art education and the wider cultural context. Southampton: John Hansard Gallery.

De Ville, Nicholas (2000). Richard Hamilton: Art Schools and Influence: A Case History. In Things: Assemblage, Collage since 1935, K. Fijalkowski ed. Norwich: Norwich Gallery.

DIS Magazine (2012). The Art School Issue. DIS Magazine. Featuring DIS’s art school trend report, LuckyPDF, Martha Rosler, Sarah Lookofsky, Rose Marcus, JEQU, Brad Troemel, Chris Kasper, Ernesto Pujol, Timur Si-Qin, Katja Novitskova, Agatha Wara, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, W.A.G.E. and others.

Duve, Thierry de (2005/1994). When Form Has Become Attitude – And Beyond. In Theory in contemporary art since 1985, Zoya Kocur & Simon Leung ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 19-31.

Elkins, James and Cornelia Sollfrank (2008). Art Education Is Radically Undertheorized. An interview with James Elkins by Cornelia Sollfrank. Dundee: Dundee Contemporary Arts, Visual Research Centre.

Elkins, James (2001). Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

Filliou, Robert (1970). Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts. Cologne: Kaspar Konig.

Foster, Hal (1984). (Post) Modern Polemics. New German Critique No. 33, Modernity and Postmodernity (Autumn, 1984), pp. 67-78.

Gillick, Liam et al (2009). Nobody Asked You to Do Nothing/ A Potential School. In Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century), Steven Henry Madoff ed. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. pp. 247–252.

Holert, Tom (2020). Knowledge Beside Itself: Contemporary Art’s Epistemic Politics. Berlin: Sternberg. Delves into the emphasis placed in recent years on “research” and “knowledge production.” Contemporary art is viewed as a strategic bet on the social distinctions and value extractions made possible by claiming a different, novel access to knowledge. What is the role and function of contemporary art in economic and political systems that increasingly manage data and affect? Discusses the practice of artists such as Christine Borland, Tony Chakar, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Adelita Husni-Bey, Jakob Jakobsen, Claire Pentecost and Pilvi Takala.

Kenning, Dean (2013). Towards a Critical Art School. What’s the Point of Art School? Central St Martins, 25 April 2013.

Kenning, Dean (2012). Refusing conformity and exclusion in art education. Metamute, 22 Mar 2012. While experimentation and activism often focus on art school education or education as art, there is a tendency to ignore the influence of corporate public pedagogy which is poisoning the roots of art education in the UK’s schools. Kenning argues that art pedagogy can only be radical if it takes on the exclusions and market bias which are impoverishing educational culture.

Kenning, Dean (2010). The Artist as Artist. Art Monthly 337, June 2010, pp. 7-10.

Kenning, Dean (2018). Art world strategies: neoliberalism and the politics of professional practice in fine art education. Journal of Visual Art Practice, Vol. 18/2 (2019), pp. 115-131. Journal of Visual Art Practice. Explores how the expansion of professional practice on fine art courses in the UK could be detrimentally impacting on the critical and political ambitions of art education. Argues that the current student fees-debt regime institutes a neoliberal model of higher education with a focus on ‘enterprise’, directing student subjectivity towards competitive opportunity seeking market strategies. Proposes a critical professional practice capable of transcending the ‘reality’ of individualist, market competition while addressing real world issues of work, career and finance. Concludes with a discussion of where ethical responsibility lies for fine art educators.

Kraus, Chris (2015). (The Ambiguous Virtues of) Art School. AKADEMIE X: Lessons in Art + Life. Phaidon. Republished on Artspace, 2 March 2015.

Llewellyn, Nigel (2015). The London Art Schools: Reforming the Art World, 1960 to Now. London: Tate. Since 1960, progressive forces in art education have fired new impulses in the field of artistic production. As society embraced youth and popular culture, art students exploded class barriers, fused fashion with Pop and insisted that art was integral to social change. Art schools, especially in London, responded to these changes, beginning to widen the range of artistic exploration from a craft-based curriculum to more art-historical and experimental approaches. A new generation emerged, whose techniques, perspectives and arguments were more influenced by ideas of art theory and personal exploration than draftsmanship and life-drawing. This history is uncovered across nine thematic chapters, which address key aspects, from the work of early pioneers in international styles, through to changes in studio practice, and new roles in the art school for art history, architecture and the art market. Nigel Llewellyn is a freelance art historian and curator. He was Director of the Research Centres programme at the Humanities Research Council before leaving in 2007 to establish the Research Department at Tate.

Madoff, Steven Henry ed. (2009 ). Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century). Cambridge MA: MIT Press. The last explosive change in art education came nearly a century ago, when the German Bauhaus was formed. Today, dramatic changes in the art world—its increasing professionalization, the pervasive power of the art market, and fundamental shifts in art-making itself in our post-Duchampian era—combined with a revolution in information technology, raise fundamental questions about the education of today’s artists. Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) brings together more than thirty leading international artists and art educators to reconsider the practices of art education in academic, practical, ethical, and philosophical terms.

Malik, Suhail (2000). Notes on the Pedagogical Pragmatics of Art School Activities. Drawing Fire: The Journal of the National Association of Fire Art Education, vol 2, no 5.

Morrill, Rebecca ed. (2015). Akademie X: Lessons in art + life. London & New York: Phaidon Press.

O’Neill, Deirdre and Mark Wayne [2017] Acting Class. Inside Film (UK), 77min. Struggling actors speak about the difficulties they face when they don’t have the resources to get in and get on in the industry. The film documents an actor’s struggle to create opportunities for those outside the elite networks and raise awareness about class exclusion in the acting industry. Chris Eccleston, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Maxine Peake, Samuel West and others talk about why this situation should concern everyone and how things have got harder since they entered the industry. A film about the lack of working class representation on stages and screens, a story of social inequality and how that impacts on the performing arts.

Reardon, John and David Mollin (2009). Ch-ch-ch-changes: artists talk about teaching, London: Ridinghouse. A guide for artists, teachers and students, this volume of interviews focuses on artists teaching in Europe, bringing to light their endeavours to survive within art education. The interviews provide insight into teaching and the artist-teacher. Offering a wide range of perspectives on the teaching of art, teachers share different approaches to teaching and the rewards of their dual-roles. The artists have been selected from institutions including Central St Martins, Glasgow School of Art, Städelschule Frankfurt, Kunstakademie Münster.

Rowles, Sarah (2013). Art Crits: 20 Questions. A Pocket Guide. London: Q-Art.

Rowles, Sarah (2011). 11 Course Leaders; 20 Questions. London: Q-Art.

Rowles, Sarah (2010). Debate. A-N Magazine Jul-Aug 2010.

Steinweg, Marcus (2009). Nine Theses on Art. Art & Research Vol. 3. No. 1. Winter 2009/10.

Suchin, Peter (2011). Rebel without a Course. Art Monthly 345, Apr 2011 & Letters.

Zimmerman, Andrea Luka [2020] Art Class. UK, 49min. A filmed performance lecture playing on, and exploring, the perennial tension between the two key words in its title. It uses the tropes of scholarly presentation and personal confession alongside extracts from the artist’s work, guest interventions, martial arts and meditation exercises and evidentiary found material. The sequence tests the limits of access that working-class artists have to cultural production and to the relevant institutions circulating these outcomes.

Co-operative art education

This is an expansive bibliography for co-operative art education, it includes research papers on co-operative higher education, information on co-ops, writing on the commons, and critiques of the neoliberal university, among other relevant topics. For additional research, information, and resources on co-operative higher education see Co-operative universities: A bibliography (2013) by Joss Winn, The Co-operative University (2013) by Dan Cook and the archival website of the Social Science Centre (2011-2019).

Agile Collective (2016). Staff Handbook. Oxford: Agile Collective. 

Babias, Marius (2004). Subject production and political art practice. Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry Issue 9 (Spring/Summer 2004), pp. 101-109.

Barbagallo, Camille, Nicholas Beuret and David Harvie ed (2019). Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici. Pluto Press.

Benjamin, Walter (1996/1915). The Life of Students. In Selected Writings Vol. 1, 1913-1926. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Bollier, David and Silke Helfrich (2019). Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons. New Society Publishers.

Bollier, David and Silke Helfrich ed. (2015). Patterns of Commoning. Amherst: Commons Strategies Group and Off the Common Books. What accounts for the persistence and spread of “commoning,” the irrepressible desire of people to collaborate and share to meet everyday needs? How are the more successful projects governed? Surveys some notable, inspiring commons around the world, from alternative currencies and open design and manufacturing, to centuries-old community forests and co-learning commons.

Catlow, Ruth and Penny Rafferty (2022). What is Radical Friendship made of? In Radical Friends: Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts, Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty ed. London: Torque Editions, pp. 26-46. Examines the potential of DAOs for reshaping value systems for interdependence and cooperation within the Arts.

Choi, Binna, Maria Lind, Emily Pethick, Natasa Petresin-Bachelez eds. (2014). Cluster: Dialectionary. London: Sternberg Press.

Clancy, Amy (2011). Don’t Defend the University, Transform it! Stir To Action, 15 Aug 2011. Contextualises the Really Open University against the backdrop of HE reforms culminating in the Browne Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance (2009) and the student protests in defence of the publicy funded university that followed.

Collinson, Paul (2019). “An exciting time to be an artist in Hull.” – When Art School goes Feral. The Double Negative, 26 Jun 2019.

Cook, Dan (2013). Realising the Co-operative University: A consultancy report for The Co-operative College.

Co-operatives UK (2011). Simply Start-Up: A guide to the process of starting a Co-operative or Community Enterprise. Manchester: Co-operatives UK.

Co-operatives UK (2014). Multi-stakeholder Co-operative Model Rules. Co-operatives UK.

workers.coop (2023). Worker Co-operative Code, 3rd ed. workers.coop Limited. The purpose of the code is to help people set up, maintain and renew strong worker cooperative enterprises. It sets out what workers should expect, and work together to achieve, as members of a co-op. It’s designed to help people create and defend decent jobs, with a culture of equality and respect at work; where people benefit fairly from their labour, and take collective control of their working lives.

Crome, Keith and Patrick O’Connor (2016). Learning Together: Foucault, Sennett and the Crisis of the Co-operative Character. Journal of Co-operative Studies, 49/2 (Autumn 2016), pp. 30-42. The authors argue that it is necessary co-operation not just as a skill, but a phronetic virtue. They address Richard Sennett’s account of the crisis of co-operation and Michel Foucault’s critique of post-Enlightenment education, which aspires to create autonomous learners and uses the Enlightenment values of transparency, instrumentalism and autonomy to create students that are isolated. Crome and O’Connor attempt to reconcile autonomy with an argument for the benefits of co-operative character: autonomy emerges from co-operation not from isolation. They provide a genealogy of Robert Owen’s early views about educational reform, highlighting the ambiguity of his proposals and legacy.

Cvejic, Bojana, Bojana Kunst and Stefan Hölscher (2016). Commons / Undercommons in art, education, work… TkH Journal for Performing Arts Theory No. 23, (Apr 2016).

Davies-Coates, Josef (2014). Open Co-ops: Inspiration, Legal Structures and Tools. STIR magazine no.06 (Summer 2014).

Diller, Burgoyne and Harlan Phillips (1964). Oral history interview with Burgoyne Diller. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (Oct 1964).

Elzenbaumer, Bianca and Fabio Franz (2018). Footprint: A radical workers co-operative and its ecology of mutual support. ephemera: theory and politics in organization, Vol. 18/4: Alternative Organising special issue (Nov 2018), pp. 791-804.

Federici, Silvia (2019). Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. Oakland: PM Press

Forkert, Kirsten (2006). Artistic and political autonomy, or the difficulty and necessity of organizing artists. Chto delat/What is to be done? When Artists Struggle Special Issue. Republished in the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.

Graeber, David and Charles Eisenstein (2012). The New Edge of Radical Economics with David Graeber. Evolver Network event moderated by Daniel Pinchbeck. NYU Kimmel Center, New York, 22 Aug 2012.

Harvey, Rebecca (2022). New federation planned for worker co-ops in the UK. Co-operative News (1 Jun 2022). The Worker Co-op Council resolved to form a completely new and independent ‘federation of worker co-operatives, individual co-operators and supporters of industrial democracy’

Hartle, Johan (2018). Thinking About, Showing, Abolishing Work, or How Can Work Be Curated. In Constructing the World: Art and Economy, 2008-2018, Sebastian Baden ed. Kunsthalle Mannheim. (Cat)

Holyoake, George Jacob (1908). History of Co-operation in England: Revised and Completed. London: T.F. Unwin.

Holyoake, George Jacob (1858). Self-help by the people: history of co-operation in Rochdale, 3rd edition. London: Holyoake & Co. Humanist Library and Archives Digital Collections.

Holyoake, George Jacob (1891). The Co-operative Movement To-day. London: Methuen.

Hulson, Marc and Esther Planas (2009). Five Years and its ‘Cooperative Post-Rhizomatic Free Association Politics of Self-Management’. Beta-Logical Inc. 

International Co-operative Alliance (1995). Statement on the Co-operative Identity. Brussels: International Co-operative Alliance.

Kosmaoglou, Sophia (2023). A co-operative art school is pie in the sky. Towards New Schools. Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, (Dec 2023).

Kosmaoglou, Sophia (2020). Feral Art School: an interview with Jayne Jones and Jackie Goodman. videomole.tv (Jul 2020). 

Linares, Natalia and Caroline Woolard (2021). Art Worlds We Want: Solidarity Art Economies. Nonprofit Quarterly, Vol. 28/2: The World We Want: In Search of New Economic Paradigms (Summer 2021). Demonstrates that artists need a solidarity economy to overcome our status as exploited workers and that culture is key to sparking the collective imagination of what’s actually possible in community control of economies and resources.

Loomio (2016). Loomio Co-op Handbook. Aotearoa: Enspiral.

Lorusso, Silvio (2019). Entreprecariat. Eindhoven: Onomatopee 170.

McCallam, David (2020). University Now: A Provocation in Five Readings. Other Education Vol. 9/2: Speaking Well (2020).

Neary, Mike (2010). Student as producer: A pedagogy for the Avant-Garde; or, how do revolutionary teachers teach? Learning Exchange, Vol. 1/1.

Neary, Mike (2012). Student as producer: an institution of the common? [or how to recover communist/revolutionary science]. Enhancing Learning in the Social Sciences Vol. 4/3, pp. 1-16.

Neary, Mike (2019). Democracy and the Co-operative University. Franklin-Wilkins Building, Waterloo Campus, King’s College London (5 Jun 2019).

Neary, Mike and Joss Winn (2012). Open education: common(s), commonism and the new common wealth. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, Vol. 12/4, pp. 406-422.

Neary, Mike and Joss Winn (2015). Beyond Public and Private: A Model for Co-operative Higher Education. Krisis journal for contemporary philosophy, Issue 2: New University (2015), pp. 114-119.

Neary, Mike and Joss Winn (2016). The University of Utopia. Post-16 Educator, Issue 84, pp. 13–15.

Neary, Mike and Joss Winn (2017). Beyond Public and Private: A Framework for Co-operative Higher Education. Open Library of Humanities, Vol. 3, Issue 2 (Jul 2017), pp. 1–36

Neary, Mike and Joss Winn (2017). Social Science Centre, Lincoln: the theory and practice of a radical idea. Roars Transactions, 5/1 (Dec 2017), pp. 1-12.

Neary, Mike and Joss Winn (2017). There is an Alternative: A report on an action research project to develop a framework for co-operative higher education. Learning and Teaching, Vol. 10/1, pp. 87–105.

Noble, Malcolm and Cilla Ross eds. (2019). Reclaiming the University for the Public Good: Experiments and Futures in Co-operative Higher Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Argues that the university is in crisis, accelerated by the passing of the UK Higher Education Research Act in 2017 and made visible during the University and College Union strikes in April 2018. In response, there are widespread demands to reclaim the university and protect education as a public good, using co-operative structures. This volume discusses a range of approaches to higher education and analyses how the future of the university can be recovered with examples of alternative higher education.

Noble, Malcolm and Cilla Ross (2021). From principles to participation: ‘The Statement on the Cooperative Identity’ and Higher Education Co-operatives. Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management Vol. 9/2 (Dec 2021).

Noble, Malcolm and Cilla Ross (2020). Co-operative Higher Education and the post-pandemic university. Post-Pandemic University (Dec 2, 2020).

Papadimitropoulos, Vangelis (2017). Politics of the Commons: Reform or Revolt? tripleC 15/2 (Jun 2017), pp. 565-583.

Past Tense (2016). Stealing the Commons: A Brief Introduction to the Politics of Open Space, Enclosure and Resistance in London. Past Tense.

Reekie, Duncan (2005). Internalising the Other: the End of the London Film-Makers’ Co-op as an Artists’ Organisation – or, The Oyster and the Grit. Cultural Consecration and its Discontents: The Arts Council v. Artists’ Film and Video Organisations, 1975-present. Screen Studies conference, University of Glasgow, (Jul 3, 2005).

Ridley, David (2017). Institutionalising critical pedagogy: Lessons from against and beyond the neo-liberal university. Power and Education, Vol.9/1 (2017), pp. 65-81.

Ridley-Duff, Rory and Mike Bull (2015). Understanding social enterprise: theory and practice, 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications. How should we understand the growing popularity of social enterprise and the wider social economy? Are alternative business models even more relevant in an uncertain business climate? Do they provide a robust response to periods of state ‘austerity’? How do social enterprises contribute to global initiatives to improve the sustainability and responsibility of the business community? Through discussion of theoretical and practical considerations and a wealth of learning features, this book focuses on the distinct pathways that social enterprises follow, critiquing the competencies and practices that contribute to a successful social economy. Explores how private, voluntary and public sector agencies engage the social economy, and how distinctive new forms have emerged from it. Examines the management of social enterprises in different contexts. Access the limited preview, download the sample chapter (The Politics of Social Enterprise) and visit the companion website to access teaching materials, slides, case studies, further reading and resources.

Robey, Austin and Severin Matusek (2023). After The Creator Economy. Los Angeles, CA: Metalabel & Co-Matter. “In fifteen years, will we still be asking people to like and subscribe?” A limited-edition zine that explores imaginative futures beyond the current state of the “creator economy”. Explores constructive alternatives to produce, distribute, and monetize creative work online. Interviews with artists, thinkers and builders about creating a more collaborative, resilient, meaningful, and democratic online creative ecosystem.

Rudd, Tim and Ivor F. Goodson eds. (2016). Negotiating neoliberalism: developing alternative educational visions. Rotterdam: Sense Publishing.

Scholz, Trebor and Nathan Schneider (2016). Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet. New York & London: OR Books.

Scholz, Trebor (2016). Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy. New York: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

Seeds for Change and Footprint Workers’ Co-operative (2015). How to set up a Workers’ Co-op. Leeds: Radical Routes.

Seeds for Change (2013). Setting up a workers co-op: A short guide. Lancaster: Seeds for Change.

Seeds for Change (2013). A Consensus Handbook: Consensus decision making for activists, co-ops and communities. Lancaster: Seeds for Change. Consensus decision making is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with.

Seeds for Change (2019). Facilitating Meetings. Lancaster: Seeds for Change. A guide to making your meetings effective, inclusive and enjoyable.

Seeds for Change (2019). Facilitation Tools for meetings and workshops. Lancaster: Seeds for Change. A compilation of tools and techniques for working in groups and facilitating meetings or workshops.

Sennett, Richard (2012). Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skilful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss rather than debate. He traces the evolution of cooperative rituals and addresses the nature of cooperation, why it has become weak, and how it could be strengthened.

Serafini, Paula (2018). Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism. New York: Routledge Studies in Political Sociology.

Shukaitis, Stevphen (2019). Combination Acts: Notes on Collective Practice in the Undercommons. Colchester: Minor Compositions. Shukaitis contends that collective organizing is pre-empted not by legal prohibition but by an internalized neoliberal logic and addresses the question of how we can prevent the recuperation of self-organised practices by capital with examples of tools and tactics. The book includes conversations with artists, musicians, activists, and theorists about collaborative practice and self-organisation. What sociality is produced by their practices? What forms of collectivity do they animate and embody?

Sussman R.W. and C.R. Cloninger ed. (2011). Origins of Altruism and Cooperation. Springer.

Swain, Harriet (2017). Coming soon, a university where students could set their own tuition fees. The Guardian, 12 Sep 2017.

TBR, a-n and James Doeser (2018). Livelihoods of Visual Artists Report. London: Arts Council England.

Troncoso, Stacco and Ann Marie Utratel (2019). DisCO Manifesto. Transnational Institute and Guerrilla Media Collective. DisCOs (Distributed Cooperative Organisations) are organisational tools and practices for groups of people who want to work together in ways that prioritize mutual support, cooperativism and care work. DisCOs focus on social and environmental work, exploring convergences between the Commons and P2P movements along with the world of cooperatives, feminist economics and the Social and Solidarity Economy. DisCOs are a counter-cultural alternative where commons principles meet feminist economics and where power becomes distributed. DisCOs are a P2P/Commons, cooperative and Feminist Economic alternative to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Blockchain technologies evolve in line with the values of their creators and existing inequalities are reproduced when investments come from profit motivated corporations. DisCOs strive for radical workplace democracy. Unlike systems of incentives, penalties and secrecy, they are based on a language of trust and cooperation. DisCO Manifesto includes background information on topics like blockchain, AI, the commons, feminism, cooperatives, cyberpunk etc.

Troncoso, Stacco and Nathan Schneider (2019). If I Only Had a Heart: Accounting for Care Work in Organizations. Looks Like New, KGNU NEws (Nov 18, 2019). Too often, the necessary care work that generates and sustains our lives occurs at the margins of the economy, unaccounted for and under-recognized. Stacco Troncoso is a member of the Guerrilla Media Cooperative that is developing a new model—the Distributed Cooperative Organization (DisCO). It’s a set of organizational tools and practices for people who want to work together in a cooperative, commons-oriented, and feminist economic form. It’s also an alternative to the logic of blockchain-based Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs. The DisCO Manifesto proposes a new model for organizations that account for the care work that supports workers and their communities. Troncoso explains how the model works and how it challenges norms, both in familiar workplaces and in techno-utopian visions.

union-coops:uk, Alex Bird, Pat Conaty, Cilla Ross, Simon Taylor and Anita Mangan (2019). A Manifesto for Decent Work. union-coops.uk. A union co-op is a fully unionised, worker co-operative, owned and controlled by those who own and work in it. Worker’s control, democracy and equality are built into the model which offers a solution to inequality and injustice both in and outside the workplace. This manifesto lays out the ideas behind union-co-operatives to show how unions and co-ops can work together. It offers a context for the need to consider new ways of thinking about unions and co-operatives. It describes the union co-op model and how to set one up. Provides case studies showing how union co-ops work in practice. Concludes with a call to action for unions and co-operatives to come together and pilot a union co-op model in the UK.

Vishmidt, Marina (2014). All Shall Be Unicorns: About Commons, Aesthetics and Time. open! Platform for Culture, Art & The Public Domain.

Wall, Derek (2017). Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals: Cooperative Alternatives beyond Markets and States. London: Pluto Press.

Winn, Joss (2015). Co-operative University: Labour, property and pedagogy. Power & Education, Vol. 7/1 (2015), pp. 39–55.

Woodin, Tom (2016). Co-operative education, neoliberalism and historical perspectives: the dilemmas of building alternatives. In Negotiating neoliberalism: developing alternative educational visions, Tim Rudd and Ivor Goodson, eds. Rotterdam: Sense Publishing, pp. 117-128.

Woodin, Tom and Michael Fielding (2013). Editorial. Co-operative Education for a New Age? Special Issue. FORUM Vol. 55/2 (2013), pp. 179-184.

Woodin, Tom ed. (2014). Co-operation, Learning and Co-operative Values: Contemporary issues in education. London: Routledge.

Yeo, Stephen (2014). The co-operative university? Transforming higher education. In Co-operation, Learning and Co-operative Values: Contemporary issues in education, Tom Woodin ed. London: Routledge.

Critique of the neoliberal university

Aronowitz, Stanley (2001). The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning. Boston: Beacon Press.

Bakhshov, Nadim (2015). Against Capitalist Education: What is Education For? Alresford: Zero Books.

Bailey, Michael and Des Freedman eds. (2011). The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance. London: Pluto Press.

Bhandar, Brenna (2013). A Right to the University. LRB Blog.

Britton, Jack, Lorraine Dearden, Neil Shephard and Anna Vignoles (2016). How English domiciled graduate earnings vary with gender, institution attended, subject and socio-economic background. London: Nuffield Foundation.

Glazek, Christopher and Sean Monahan (2013). Certainty of Hopelessness: A Primer on Discharging Student Debt. Los Angeles: Paper Chase Press (n+1). While bankruptcy protocols are always complex, student debt is loaded with its own special brand of illegibility. Debtors are misled into thinking that discharging student loans is impossible and shamed into treating the mere notion of relief as a form of welfare. Our intention was to map the possibilities for broke postgrads interested in taking a more adversarial approach to dealing with their debt. Guides like Strike Debt’s Debt Resistors Operations Manual help combat the vilification of debtors and address pragmatic concerns about keeping loans out of default.

Hall, Gary (2016). The Uberfication of the University. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. The contemporary university’s implications for the future organization of labor. The Uberfication of the University analyzes the emergence of the sharing economy and the companies behind it: LinkedIn, Uber, and Airbnb. The book considers the contemporary university, itself subject to such entrepreneurial practices, as one polemical site for the affirmative disruption of this model.

Harney, Stefano (2009). Extreme neo-liberalism: an introduction. ephemera volume 9/4: The University of Finance (Nov 2009), pp. 318-329

Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten (2013). Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions.

James, Sarah E. (2023). Crisis in Art Education. Art Monthly 468 (Jul-Aug 2023). Argues that the neoliberal and expansionist agenda of senior university management teams is directed by an aggressive and poorly planned drive to transform these former-public institutions, fuelled by short-term vision coupled with accumulated debt, that has resulted in the unsuccessful privatisation of the whole sector.

Moten, Fred and Stefano Harney (2004). University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses. Social Text 22/2 (Jun 2004), pp. 101-115.

McGettigan, Andrew (2013). The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education. London: Pluto Press.

Molesworth, Mike, Elizabeth Nixon and Richard Scullion eds. (2011). Marketisation of higher education: the student as consumer. Abingdon: Routledge.

Pehe, Veronika (2015). International Actions to Resist Commercialization of Education. www.politicalcritique.org, (May 24, 2015).

Precarious Workers Brigade (2011). Fragments Toward an Understanding of a Week that Changed Everything. e-flux Journal #24 (Apr 2011). First hand account of the 2010 UK student protests. In the fall of 2011, fifty thousand protesters marched in the streets of London and other municipalities to voice their opposition to spending cuts and tuition hikes in further education, while simultaneously crafting new models for free education, participatory democracy, and class solidarity. The discussion of  granular details and wider ramifications of these protests remains a key resource for the continuous project of institutional and societal change.

Sutton, Isabel (2014). Is this the end of the British art school? New Statesman, 20 Nov 2014. Art schools used to be a place where the socially and intellectually marginal could distinguish themselves. Now, with unattainable entry requirements and a hefty price tag, they’re becoming a dwelling place for commercial interests and the children of the international elite.

Winn, Joss (2015). Academic Labour and the Capitalist University: A critique of higher education through the law of value. PhD Thesis, School of Social and Political Sciences.

Warner, Marina (2014). Why I Quit. LRB Vol. 36, No 17 (11 September 2014), pp. 42-43.

Pedagogy

Ault, Julie and Martin Beck (2006). Drawing Out & Leading Forth. In Notes for an Art School, Florian Waldvogel, Anton Vidokle, Mai Abu ElDahab ed. Amsterdam: Manifesta Foundation. Looks closely at some of the recent changes that have taken place in art school education, interrogating different models of teaching and the ideologies inherent within them. Taking a comparative approach, offers insight into how American models have influenced European trends, leading to business-orientated structures. In turn this is seen to produce an economy of hyper-professionalism amongst a new generation of artists, undermining the historical commitments of the art school as an alternative educational institution.

Billuart, Morgane, Sepp Eckenhaussen, Dunja Nesovic (2021). Post-Precarity Zine: Toolbox for Beginning Artists. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures and the Learning Community Critical Making & Learning Through Design. A collection of extracts, testimonials, reports, summaries, drawings and notes from the first Post-Precarity Precarity Autumn Camp, organised by INC, Platform BK and Hotel Maria Kapel in 2021 to discuss the ways in which the narrative around art and its practices has changed and can be geared towards the future. Includes an open letter to Dutch art academies with demands for change, an essay on principles for post-precarity, references and exercises.

Freire, Paulo (2005/1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Haworth, Robert H. ed. (2012). Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories and Critical Reflections on Education. Oakland: PM Press.

Hooks, Bell (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Illich, Ivan (1971). Deschooling Society. New York, Harper & Row.

Institute for Precarious Consciousness (2014). Anxiety, affective struggle, and precarity consciousness-raising. Interface: a journal for and about social movements, Vol. 6/2 (Nov 2014), pp. 271 – 300. (Nov 2014).

Institute for Precarious Consciousness (2014). Six Theses on Anxiety & the Prevention of Militancy. Critical Legal thinking, 17 Apr 2014.

Ivison, Tim and Tom Vandeputte (2012). Contestations: Learning From Critical Experiments in Education. London: Bedford Press. Range of artists and theorists consider the state of education and learning in light of political struggle, institutional crisis and new media platforms. Focuses on creative experiments and projects in education, facilitating a conversation about the future and directions of educational challenges which exist in current academic models. Contributions by Jakob Jakobsen, Nils Norman, Ultra-red, Gregory Sholette, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi.

Kanes Weisman, Leslie, Cristina Cerulli and Florian Kossak (2009). Educator, Activist, Politician. Leslie Kanes Weisman in conversation with Cristina Cerulli and Florian Kossak. Field Journal, vol.3/1, Agency and the Praxis of Activism (Dec 2009).

Leonard, Allenna (1999). A Viable System Model: Consideration of Knowledge Management. Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, August 1999. Contends that individual and organizational knowledge is difficult to value and therefore difficult to manage. Looks at the management of knowledge from the perspective of the individual, the network and the organization using Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model, a powerful descriptive and diagnostic tool to map management capacities and promote viability.

McLaughlin, Becky ed. (2017). Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom: Theory Lessons. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Meineche Hansen, Sidsel and Tom Vandeputte eds. (2015). Politics of Study. Occasional Table No. 5. Open Editions. “Drawing on feminism, traditions of self-organisation and pointed analyses of capitalist education, the conversations collected in this volume provide compelling reports on the political and vocational challenges confronted by those involved in inventing institutions and practices of learning in and against late neoliberalism” (Alberto Toscano)

Newman, Fred and Lois Holzman (1993). Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist. London: Routledge.

Nixon, Jon (2011). Reclaiming higher education as a public good. Higher Education as a Public Good: Critical Perspectives. Oxford: New College, 4-5 Jul 2011.

Nixon, Jon (2012). Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University. London: Bloomsbury.

Plummer, Thomas G. (1990). Diagnosing And Treating The Ophelia Syndrome. Faculty lecture, Delta Phi Alpha, German Honor Society, 5 April 1990.

Precarious Workers Brigade (2017). Training for Exploitation? Politicising Employability and Reclaiming Education. Foreword by Silvia Federici. London: Journal of Aesthetics & Protest. A critical resource pack for educators teaching employability, ‘professional practice’ and work-based learning. Authored by the Precarious Workers Brigade and designed by Evening Class. Provides a pedagogical framework that assists students and others in deconstructing dominant narratives around work, employability and careers, and explores alternative ways of engaging with work and the economy. Statistics and workshop exercises on precarity, employment rights, cooperation & solidarity. As a feminist I recognise many of these tools from past and contemporary practices of consciousness raising. They are effective and I encourage readers to use them (Silvia Federici), paperback or free PDF.

Radical Education Forum (2012). Radical Education Workbook.

Ranciere, Jacques (1991). The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. Trans. & Intro. Kristin Ross. Redwood: Stanford University Press.

Ranciere, Jacques (2007). The Emancipated Spectator. Artforum 45/7 (March 2007), pp. 271-280. 

Raunig, Gerald (2013). Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

Raunig, Gerald (2009). In Modulation Mode: Factories of Knowledge. Translated by Aileen Derieg. Transversal 08/09: Knowledge Production And Its Discontents (Aug 2009).

Robinson, Ken (2011). Changing Education Paradigms. RSA Animate.

Rubinstein, David and Colin Stoneman eds. (1972). Education for Democracy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Situationist International and students of the University of Strasbourg (2000/1966). On the Poverty of Student Life: Considered in its Economic, Political, Psychological, Sexual, and Especially Intellectual Aspects, with a Modest Proposal for Doing Away With It. Detroit: Black and Red. Written by Tunisian Situationist Mustapha/Omar Khayati. Pamphlet published by the student union of the University of Strasbourg and handed out at the official opening of the university in November 1966. The student union was subsequently closed by court order. Online versions nothingness.org (includes the judge’s summation) / Bureau of Public Secrets (annotated) / Situationst International Online (annotated, translated by Ken Knabb).

Springer, Simon, Marcelo Lopes de Souza and Richard J. White eds. (2016). The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Stein, Maurice and Larry Miller (2016 /1970). Blueprint for Counter Education Expanded Reprint. New York: Inventory Press. A defining work of radical pedagogy from the Vietnam War, originally published in 1970 by Doubleday and integrated into the design of the Critical Studies curriculum at CalArts. The book was a pedagogical experiment and an attempt to enact a visual turn in the organization of knowledge in the form of a “highly participative series of art-life games”. The cover proclaimed: “This counter-university makes obsolete the traditional university process… There is no text book, no final exam; and the ‘faculty’ includes Marcuse, McLuhan, Eldridge Cleaver, and Jean-Luc Godard… The Revolution Starts Here”. The book was accompanied by large graphic posters designed by Marshall Henrichs that served as a portable learning environment for a new process-based model of education. The posters mapped shifting patterns of relations between bodies of radical thought and artistic practice from the avant-gardes to postmodernism. They were understood as a perpetually adaptable and extensible switchboard of ideas built around the work of Marcuse and McLuhan.

Stommel, Jesse, Chris Friend and Sean Michael Morris ed. (2020). Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Collection. Hybrid Pedagogy. A collection of articles from the last 10 years that have helped shape the field of critical digital pedagogy. The journal Hybrid Pedagogy has worked to help craft a theory of teaching and learning in and around digital spaces. The collection represents a cross-section of academic and non-academic culture and features articles by women, Black people, indigenous people, Chicanx and Latinx writers, disabled people, queer people, and other underrepresented populations. The goal is to provide evidence for the work being done by teachers, librarians, instructional designers, graduate students and technologists, which advances the study and the praxis of critical digital pedagogy. “Ultimately, digital pedagogy is about human relationships, the complexity of humans working together with other humans — the challenge of finding ways to teach through a screen, not to a screen”

Suissa, Judith (2010/2006 ). Anarchism and Education: A philosophical perspective. Oakland: PM Press. First published 2006 by Routledge.

Vygotsky, Lev (1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, Lev (1997/1926). Educational Psychology. Boca Raton, Florida: St Lucie Press.

Woodin, Tom (2007). ‘Chuck out the teacher’: radical pedagogy in the community. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 26/1, pp. 89-104.

Woolard, Caroline (2015). Pedagogies of Payment. The Enemy, 11 Nov 2015. How rising tuition disciplines students and why artists are organizing artists to demand policy reform.

Self-organisation

A bibliography on self-organisation, DIY, peer-to-peer networks, co-operation, collectivity, group dynamics, and study groups. For additional resources on self-organisation, group work, co-operation, and collectivity see the resources for co-operative and alternative art education.

Bey, Hakim (1985). T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia.

Choi, Binna, Annette Krauss, Yolande van der Heide and Liz Allan eds. (2018). Unlearning Exercises: Art Organizations as Sites for Unlearning. Amsterdam: Valiz.

Bion, Wilfred R. (2001/1961). Experiences in groups and other papers. London: Routledge. Influential study of unconscious group behaviour that contributed to the evolution of group psychotherapy. A record of observations from Bion’s work with groups (including study groups) that he believed might apply to society more broadly. Bion suggests that there are two groups present in every group, the work group which keeps the group anchored to its purpose, and the basic assumption group, which is mired in the tacit assumptions that inform behaviour within the group.

Bookchin, Murray (2005/1982). The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Oakland: AK Press. Traces the conflicting legacies of freedom and domination, from the emergence of human culture to global capitalism and argues that environmental, economic and political devastation are born at the moment that human societies begin to organize themselves hierarchically.

Bradley, Will, Mika Hannula, Cristina Ricupero and Superflex eds. (2006). Self-Organisation/Counter Economic Strategies. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Survey of different approaches to the creation, dissemination and maintenance of alternative, ‘bottom-up’ models of social or economic organisation, and the practical and theoretical implications, consequences and possibilities of these self-organised structures. The term is borrowed from systems theory and the natural sciences, where it describes systems whose internal organisation tends to increase in complexity without being guided by an outside source. It is used to describe social groups or networks that are independent of institutional or corporate structures, non-hierarchical, open and operate participatory decision-making processes. Counter-economic strategies are radical alternatives to classical capitalist economic organisation. Writers from different fields have been invited to investigate these themes with reference to particular situations. They discuss a wide cross-section of activity, from new approaches to intellectual property and impact of the free/open source software movement to political activism and the self-organisation embodied in informal architecture and the black economy. They represent diverse, and sometimes conflicting, viewpoints and interpretations.

Chatterton, Paul ed. (2008). What’s this place? Stories from radical social centres in the UK and Ireland. Leeds: Autonomous Geographies. Research project on the network of autonomous spaces and social centres in the UK and Ireland at the time.

Chilver, John (2007). Group and Gang (The Absent Collective). Afterall / Contexts (April 2007).

De Wachter, Ellen Mara (2017). Co-Art: Artists on Creative Collaboration. London: Phaidon Press. Over the past fifty years the number of artists making work collaboratively has grown exponentially. Co-Art: Artists on Creative Collaboration explores this phenomenon through conversations with pairs and groups that offer insights that are relevant beyond the art world, a vital tool for those who seek to work with other people. Featured: Allora & Calzadilla, Assemble, ayr, Biggs & Collings, ChimPom, Claire Fontaine, DAS INSTITUT, DIS, Elmgreen & Dragset, Eva & Franco Mattes, GCC, Gelitin, Guerrilla Girls, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Los Carpinteros, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Raqs Media Collective, SUPERFLEX.

Downing, John (2011). Encyclopedia of social movement media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Dunn, Peter and Loraine Leeson (1997). The Aesthetics of Collaboration. Art Journal Vol. 56/1, Aesthetics and the Body Politic (Spring 1997), pp. 26-37.

Encyclopaedia of Informal Education (2018). Group work principles, theory and practice. Encyclopaedia of Informal Education. A collection of resources on group work.

Freeman, Jo (Joreen) (1970). The Tyranny of Structurelessness. Updated version. Originally published in Second Wave vol. 2, no. 1 (1972), pp. 1-6. Republished in a pamphlet together with the riposte: Levine, Cathy (1974). The Tyranny of Tyranny. Black Rose No. 1 (Autumn 1974).

French, Robert and Peter Simpson (2010). The ‘work group’: Redressing the balance in Bion’s Experiences in Groups. Human Relations, Vol. 63/12. pp. 1859-1878.

Freud, Sigmund (1949/1921). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Trans. James Strachey. Standard Edition, vol. XVIII. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, pp. 67-143.

Fuchs, Christian (2007). Self-Organising System. Encyclopedia of Governance, Vol. 2, Mark Bevir ed. London: Sage, pp. 863-864.

Galimberti, Jacopo (2017). Individuals Against Individualism: Art Collectives in Western Europe (1956–1969). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Hebert, Stine and Anne Szefer Karlsen (2013). Self-Organised. Bergen: Open Editions.

Holmes, Brian (2006). The Artistic Device, or, the Articulation of Collective Speech. ephemera, vol. 6, no. 4 (Nov 2006), pp. 411-432.

Holmes, Brian (2008). Articulating the Cracks in the Worlds of Power, 16 Beaver Group talking with Brian Holmes. Continental Drift.

Holmes, Brian (2012). Eventwork, The Fourfold Matrix of Contemporary Social Movements. In Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011, Nato Thompson ed. New York: Creative Time, Cambridge & London: MIT Press.

Izak, Michal and Linda Hitchin (2014). Editorial. Untold Stories in Organisations Special Issue. Tamara Journal Vol.12/1 (March 2014), pp. 5-6.

Jakobsen, Jakob (2003). Notes on institutions, anti-institutions and self-institutions. Infopool.

Jakobsen, Jakob (2006). Self-institutionalisation: for good and ill the process of institutionalisation has become internalized. Art Monthly 298, Jul-Aug 2006, pp. 7-10.

Kester, Grant H. (2004). Conversation pieces: community and communication in modern art. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kracauer, Siegfried (1995). The Group as Bearer of Ideas. In Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, Thomas Y. Levin ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 143-170.

Latour, Bruno (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Latour, Bruno (1996/1990). On Actor Network Theory: A few clarifications plus more than a few complications. Soziale Welt, Vol. 47 (1996), pp. 369-381.

Lind, Maria, Johanna Billing and Lars Nilsson (2008). Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Contemporary Art and Collaborative Practices. Black dog Publishing.

Lind, Maria (2010). The Collaborative Turn. In Selected Maria Lind Writing, Brian Kuan Wood ed. Berlin: Sternberg Press, pp. 177-204.

Lippard, Lucy (1970). The Art Workers’ Coalition: not a history. Studio International, November 1970, Vol. 180, Nr 927, pp. 171-174.

Matt (Firefly Collective) (2001). Anarchism And Collective Organization. Northeastern Anarchist #2 (Spring 2001).

Milstein, Cindy (2014). Organizing Social Spaces as if Social Relations Matter. ROAR Magazine (Jun 13, 2014).

Molenda, Ania and Cristina Ampatzidou, MoneyLab Network (2020). Radical Care: Embracing Feminist Finance. Rotterdam and Amsterdam: Amateur Cities and the Institute of Network Cultures. A collection of interviews and artworks that address the question of value in terms locality, cooperation and caring. MoneyLab is a collective of artists, designers, researchers, geeks and activists experimenting with more equitable, diverse and sustainable futures for finance and economy.

Nunes, Rodrigo (2014). Organisation of the Organisationless: Collective Action After Networks. Luneburg: PML Books & Mute.

Opstrup, Kasper (2017). The Way Out. Invisible Insurrections and Radical Imaginaries in the UK Underground 1961-1991. Colchester: Minor Compositions. A counterculture history of art and experimental politics. Examines the radical political and hedonist imaginaries of the experimental fringes of the UK Underground from 1961 to 1991 and the relations between collective and collaborative practices with an explicit agenda of cultural revolution. Charts a history of experiments with cultural engineering, art, media, politics, radical education and the occult revival. Case studies include speculative techniques for igniting an insurrection with cultural means: the sigma project, London Anti-University, Academy 23 and thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. Contained within these imaginaries is a new type of action university: a communal affair that would improvise a new type of social relation into existence by de-programming and de-conditioning us. Instead of being turned upside down, the world was to be changed from the inside out.

Pethick, Emily (2008). Resisting Institutionalisation. Nought to Sixty publication, Issue 4 (Aug 2008). London: Institute of Contemporary Art.

Purchase, Graham (1998). Communes, Collectives and Claptrap. Spunk Library.

Purchase, Graham (1998). Anarchist Organisation: Why it is Failing. Spunk Library.

Ranciere, Jacques (2009). Misadventures of Critical Thought. In The Emancipated Spectator. Trans. Gregory Elliott. London: Verso.

Raqs Media Collective (2009). Additions, Subtractions: On Collectives and Collectivities. Manifesta Journal #8: Collective Curating 2009/10.

Seeds for Change (2018). Effective groups. Lancaster: Seeds for Change. A guide to successful group organising, from starting up groups to keeping them going.

Seeds for Change (2017). Quick Consensus Decision Making. Lancaster: Seeds for Change. A guide to using consensus in fast moving situations, actions and protests.

Seeds for Change (2009). Organising Successful Meetings. Lancaster: Seeds for Change. Basic tips on making your meeting productive, effective and inclusive.

Shukaitis, Stevphen (2009). Imaginal Machines: Autonomy & Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life. New York: Autonomedia.

Shukaitis, Stevphen (2019). Cheese Stands Alone? Art History, Vol. 2/1 (Feb 2019), pp. 184-189.

Shukaitis, Stevphen (2009). The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics & Cultural Labour After the Avant-Garde. London & New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Smith, Mark K. (2004/1996). The early development of group work. Encyclopaedia of Informal Education.

Starhawk (2011). The Empowerment Manual: A guide for collaborative groups. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.

Stimson, Blake and Gregory Sholette (2007). Collectivism after Modernism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Temporary Services (2006). Group Work. New York: Printed Matter. A multitude of perspectives on group work and collectives from the 1960s to the present. Interviews with General Idea, Haha, The Ex, WochenKlausur, What, How & for Whom (WHW), essays on The Abortion Counseling Service of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union and the anarchist Guerilla street theater group The Diggers.

Thornton, Cassie (2020). The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future. Pluto Press. A vision for revolutionary care: a viral, peer-to-peer feminist health network. Drawing on radical models developed in the Greek solidarity clinics and directly engaging with discussions around mutual aid and the coronavirus pandemic, The Hologram develops the skills and relationships we need for the anti-capitalist struggles of the present, and the post-capitalist society of the future. One part art, one part activism, one part science fiction, this book offers the reader a guide to establishing a Hologram network as well as reflections on this cooperative work in progress.

Trapese Collective (2007). Do It Yourself: A Handbook for Changing Our World. London: Pluto Press.

Watzlawick, Paul, D.D. Jackson and J.H. Beavin (1967). Pragmatics of human communication: a study of interactional patterns, pathologies, and paradoxes. New York, London: W. W. Norton.

Research methodology

Preliminary reading list for the participatory action research project on alternative art education and radical pedagogy initiated by members of ART&CRITIQUE in 2016.

Biddle, Erika, David Graeber and Stevphen Shukaitis (2007). Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Oakland: AK Press.

Bookchin, Natalie et al. (2013). Militant Research Handbook. New York: New York University.

Emmelhainz, Irmgard (2016). Geopolitics and Contemporary Art, Part One: From Representation’s Ruin to Salvaging the Real. e-flux journal #69 (Jan 2016).

Haraway, Donna (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Autumn 1988), pp. 575-599.

Herrera, Tania (2018). Militant Research. Krisis, Issue 2 (2018), Marx from the Margins, pp. .

Holmes, Brian (2005). Continental Drift: Activist research, from geopolitics to geopoetics. ephemera, theory & politics in organization vol 5. no. X (Dec 2005), pp. 740-743.

Malo de Molina, Marta (2006/2004). Common Notions, Part 1: Workers-inquiry, co-research, consciousness-raising. Transversal (Aug 2004).

Malo de Molina, Marta (2006/2004). Common Notions, Part 2: Institutional Analysis, Participatory Action-Research, Militant Research. Transversal (Aug 2004).

Schultz, Heath (2014). Autonomous Research within and/or Beneath the Ruins; Or, We are Finally Getting our Feet Wet. ArtLeaks Gazette #2 (June 2014).