Urgent Pedagogies

How can socially engaged critical spatial practice act in relation and response to the urgencies of social justice and equality, contested territories and conditions of conflict? In what ways can critical and experimental forms and environments for learning and knowledge production transform practice?

Urgent Pedagogies is a project and platform for inquiry, sharing knowledge and experience through public events and an emerging online archive highlighting and discussing both practice and theory. It aims to serve as a common resource, bringing together practitioners and researchers from a plurality of contexts, experiences, and backgrounds to be in dialogue and think together.

Looking at the role of socially engaged critical spatial practices and their ability to act and develop, learning is central. To act—in relation to societal urgencies and situations of conflict—demands the capacity to carefully approach issues and contexts, adopt different perspectives and create strategies and settings for learning, un-learning, thinking together, and alternative forms of producing and sharing knowledge. To move beyond established institutional forms of research and teaching, and to encourage old and new forms of learning may contribute to challenging social and political contexts ruled by hegemonic institutionalism, colonial legacies, and extractive capitalism. Approaches of alternative, collectively initiated pedagogical platforms may be emancipative forms of action, care, solidarity and resistance. Urgent Pedagogies aims to highlight new possibilities and build alliances across methodologies and initiatives.

Urgent Pedagogies sees learning and pedagogy as crucial to socially engaged critical practices and aims to contribute by hosting a space for inquiry and dialogue to share knowledge and experience. It focuses on critical spatial practices, however, both in its research and distribution it is a transdisciplinary project connecting various artistic practices such as, design, architecture, spatial and urban practice with social movements, civil society and activist initiatives. It has the ambition to engage with practices and people from a multitude of experiences, situations, contexts, and geographies. Learning is central to the project; learning through open-ended and experimental approaches, through engaging with different perspectives, through new encounters and critical dialogues, and a growing network of alliances.

Urgent Pedagogies has been developed by Magnus Ericson and Pelin Tan with Roberta Burchardt, curator and Project Manager at IASPIS, and independent curator Michelle Song. The online platform has been designed and developed by Johnny Chang.