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

Tue Jun 25 13:51:10 UTC 2013

Dear Laurence,

Thank you so much for taking the time to read our report and for such positive endorsements.
I see you forwarded it to the FUN list. I had included them on the initial mail out. I had hoped you had received it through that list too, but you got it one way or another.

So, as for your questions...
1) The initial training was far from adequate. One of our main tasks this summer is to develop a proper, robust in-house training programme. This is going to involve three elements: 1) Political economy - I've asked various people/groups to contribute to this. I've even asked the Adam Smith Institute! They've not got back yet...; We're also attending economics workshops run by other groups so we can take the best bits of those e.g. I went to Jubilee Debt Campaign's recent 'Economics for all' and am going to 'Rethinking Economics' on Fri and Sat at LSE; 2) Critical pedagogy - again, we're inviting people to come and help us develop our training on this (inc SSC's own Mike N and Sarah A). I'm also reading on this; 3) Awareness of issues/challenges facing the groups we're working with - for this we're inviting representatives of the groups we worked with in the pilot scheme to help us develop this side of the training, and also probably address our new facilitators at the training workshop itself.
Ultimately, we want to get it to the stage that everything is done collaboratively between organisers/facilitators/participants. Indeed, we want participants to become organisers and facilitators. But this does take time.

2) Re repositories of study materials. Those of us on the Organising Committee working on this are aware of efforts by others to do the same thing. We want to work together to avoid duplication of efforts. And, yes, all this will definitely be totally open to anyone and everyone to use.

3) Having folk at Brookes and Ruskin involved is absolutely crucial, we believe. We are currently recruiting for our Organising Committee and we desperately want representatives from both institutions at the heart of it driving this forward. I'm very confident this is going to happen soon. 

4) Re an article. Yes, perhaps Sara and Ana Margarida might be interested. Michael Edwards in the US has suggested that we write something for his 'Transformations' section on OpenDemocracy. We could turn this report into an article, for sure. I put in an abstract for the Edinburgh conference but it was rejected.

I'm really thrilled that you Laurence feel inspired by our report. To be frank, we've achieved very little so far, but building the foundations is the hard work. I think this thing can take off over the next 12-18months.

In solidarity to all!
Joel

> From: ldavis at oceanfree.net
> To: sarah at socialsciencecentre.org.uk; ssc at lists.aktivix.org
> Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:40:59 +0100
> Subject: Re: [SSC] Inaugural report on People's Political Economy project
> 
> 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 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> SSC mailing list
> SSC at lists.aktivix.org
> https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/ssc

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.aktivix.org/pipermail/ssc/attachments/20130625/9d2f0e4b/attachment.html>