[Launch] Alternative Pedagogical Spaces with Anna Colin and Alice Dusapin

Join us for the launch of Alternative Pedagogical Spaces – From Utopia to Institutionalization (Villa Arson, Sternberg Press, 2025), with Anna Colin in conversation with Alice Dusapin.

Schedule
Saturday May 3, 15:00 Presentation

Find the book here

About the book
Grounded in empirical research, Alternative Pedagogical Spaces: From Utopia to Institutionalization is a critical inquiry into the establishment, development, and transformation of alternative pedagogical and social spaces. Written by Anna Colin, a former director and co-founder of Open School East, an independent art school and community space founded in London in 2013, this essay-length book explores the instituting factors, organizational life cycles, and alignments and misalignments between values and practices that permeate such a project. The essay delves into the qualities and prerequisites for what Colin calls "multi-public educational organizations." It also scrutinizes the hurdles associated with the effort to remain alternative, including processes of habituation, temptation or pressure to scale up, ethos-bending fundraising exercises, and long tenure, as well as the plain desire for stability and sustainability.

Alternative Pedagogical Spaces proposes where to look for a reconceptualization of waiting, slowness, and longevity, and asks how these ideas may benefit cultural practice and the design of future institutions (or the redesign of existing ones). Overriding the common assumption that success equals longevity, the author searches for institutional models that resist chrononormativity, drawing from social movements, psychotherapy, biology, and permaculture.

About Anna Colin
Anna Colin is programme director of the MFA Curating and co-director of the Centre for Art and Ecology, Goldsmiths, London. Besides Open School East, Anna worked as associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2014–20), associate director at Bétonsalon, Paris (2011–12), and curator at Gasworks, London (2007–10). She co-curated Chaleur Humaine, the 2nd Dunkirk Art & Industry Triennale (2023–24) on the relationship between energy and the arts since 1973. She holds a PhD in cultural geography and has a training in arboriculture.

About Alice Dusapin
Alice Dusapin (born 1989 in Paris) is a publisher, independent researcher and curator. Co-founder and co-director of the journal octopus notes and the publishing house Daisy, she co-directs the curatorial program Ampersand. She is currently the head of the publishing department at Villa Arson (Nice, France).