[SSC] Inaugural report on People's Political Economy project

[Laurence Davis]

Thank you for sharing this report. It is fascinating and inspiring reading, 
and provides a great deal of food for thought. It should be shared as widely 
as possible.

More substantively, the report raises a number of critical questions 
regarding (among other things) the development of meaningful and lasting 
relationships between university-based critical pedagogy groups and local 
community organisations, curriculum development, societal challenges to 
inclusive radical democratic learning, demographics and social equality, 
trust, recruitment and training of facilitators, and institutionalisation. 
With regard to the latter two issues, I would like to hear more about the 
nature of the training offered to facilitators. The report notes that 
training focused on the theory and practice of critical pedagogy, leaving 
the issue of content 'somewhat aside' (though it also notes that 
facilitators were encouraged to read some of the core syllabus helpfully 
outlined on p. 10). Did the facilitators find this to be sufficient for 
their needs? Are there any plans underway to expand the scope of the 
training offered? (a question, it would seem to me at least, closely related 
to those raised about the challenges involved in recruiting committed 
facilitators: the prospect of well-developed, well-organised, and sociable 
training sessions would no doubt be a powerful recruiting tool for students 
with many other claims on their time) And will the study materials 
repository be made freely available to all online?

With respect to institutionalisation, it is wonderful to hear about the 
links being forged with Ruskin College and Oxford Brookes University. Will 
these ties extend beyond recruitment of facilitators? Further afield, links 
might also be developed with comparable community education projects, such 
as the M.A. in Community Education, Equality, and Social Activism at the 
National University of Ireland, Maynooth (http://ceesa-ma.blogspot.ie/).

Personally, I would love to read and hear more about the project. Perhaps an 
article on the subject might be published in the forthcoming issue of 
*Interface: a journal for and about social movements* on the pedagogical 
practices of social movements 
(http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Interface-5-1-CFP-vol-6-no-1.pdf), 
edited by Sara Motta and Ana Margarida Esteves? Or a presentation organised 
for the Critical Pedagogies conference in Edinburgh on the 6th of September 
(http://criticalpedagogies2013.wordpress.com/programme/)?

Congratulations to all those involved in preparing this report, and in doing 
the hard organisational work which makes it such inspiring reading!

Best wishes from Ireland,

Laurence



-----Original Message----- 
From: Sarah Amsler
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 12:41 AM
To: ssc at lists.aktivix.org
Subject: [SSC] Inaugural report on People's Political Economy project

Dear all,

Some of you will remember Joel Lazarus's talk about the People's
Political Economy project, which he gave at our recent AGM in May. The
organisers have just published a report on their first year of work,
which includes descriptions of all their activities and reflections on
problems and lessons they are learning.

The report is available on their website here: http://www.ppeuk.org/.

Best wishes,
Sarah

_______________________________________________
SSC mailing list
SSC at lists.aktivix.org
https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/ssc