Guest program: Launch of the book Alternative Pedagogical Spaces: From Utopia to Institutionalization by Anna Colin

Based on empirical research, Alternative Pedagogical Spaces: From Utopia to Institutionalization investigates how alternative pedagogical spaces are created, developed, and transformed.

Co-founder of the independent art school and community space Open School East, initiated in London in 2013, Anna Colin was its director from 2013 to 2021. In this work, she explores the factors enabling the establishment of structures, their life cycles, as well as the possible discrepancy between the practices and values that bring them into existence. The investigation analyzes the characteristics and prerequisites for what Colin calls ‘multi-public educational establishments’. It also examines the thorny situations that await resolutely alternative projects: habituation processes, temptation or necessity to expand, fundraising that undermines work ethics, longevity, or the simple desire to achieve viability and stability.

Alternative Pedagogical Spaces proposes to reconceptualize the notions of expectation, slowness, and longevity and attempts to define what could benefit cultural practices and the creation of future institutions (or the redesign of existing ones). Rather than considering an equivalence between success and sustainability, the author explores institutional models that resist chrononormativity, drawing from social movements, psychotherapy, biology, and permaculture.

Afterword: interview with Catherine Queloz
Design: in the shade of a tree

French edition published by Villa Arson
English edition published by Villa Arson and Sternberg Press