A week of free workshops, discussions & skill-sharing in London

The plan­ning for the Lon­don FreeSchool week is going well with con­firmed work­shops and the such like start­ing to appear on the web­site. Bowl Court Social Cen­tre, the orig­i­nal loca­tion for the weeks event, was sad­ly evict­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago. How­ev­er, the event lives on and has moved to the ram­pART ( http://www.rampart.co.nr) and LARC ( http://www.londonarc.org.) After all a free school should not be lim­it­ed and con­tained by con­crete walls!

The dead­line for work­shops is soon approach­ing so if you are up for facil­i­tat­ing some­thing over the week drop us a line ( deschooling_society@lists.riseup.net) with a brief descrip­tion of the event, how long you will need, your avail­abil­i­ty between the 1st and 7th Sep­tem­ber and if you have any spe­cial require­ments (e.g. Tools / equip­ment). If you do this by mon­day then we can include it in the timetable.

If you want to know what is hap­pen­ing over the week and when, you are unfor­tu­nate­ly going to have to wait until the full timetable has been released next Wednes­day. But here’s a lit­tle taster…

MONDAY 1st SEPTEMBER 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Wel­come to Lon­don FreeSchool!
Come along, have some lunch, meet each oth­er and find out about the week ahead.

GENDER & AUTONOMOUS SPACES
Autonomous spaces are not immune from the kind of casu­al sex­ism that is still com­mon in the wider cul­ture but the prob­lem is rarely dis­cussed. One solu­tion has been to set up women only spaces but many peo­ple feel that these avoid the prob­lem rather than address­ing it. This work­shop will be about explor­ing how peo­ple feel about ques­tions of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty in the con­text of rad­i­cal activism and how we can find ways to address the issues.

SAFER SPACES
Its about acknowl­edg­ing that oppres­sive behav­iours and ideas are still with in our ‘rad­i­cal’ activist com­mu­ni­ties, no mat­ter how ‘rad­i­cal’ we think we are. The point of the work­shop is to get peo­ple to think and talk about this, find ways to deal with this in their com­mu­ni­ties and work to stop their own oppres­sive behav­iours.

GETTING RID OF EDUCATION: COMMUNITIES FOR LEARNING
No ones needs to be edu­cat­ed. We all learn all the time. What peo­ple need are resours­es and sup­port to help them get where they want to go. What does this sort of an organ­i­sa­tion look like and how can you start one? Come and find out!
Leslie Bar­son (Safran) home edu­cat­ed her two chil­dren and found­ed and runs The Oth­er­wise Club, a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for fam­i­lies choos­ing not to send their chil­dren to school, in NW Lon­don since 1993.

SCHOOL PRIVATISATION
A dis­cus­sion on school pri­vati­sa­tion in the UK and the Wem­b­ley Tent City Occu­pa­tion ( http://www.tentcityoccupation.co.uk/) with Hank Roberts.

A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO FOOD BUYING GROUPS
Have you ever thought of get­ting togeth­er with a group of peo­ple to buy food in bulk? Come and meet oth­er folks who’d like to do the same, to find out more and start plan­ning your food-buy­ing group. Cheap­er food, autonomous organ­is­ing, stronger links with­in our com­mu­ni­ties, and no more
super­mar­kets: let’s make the best of the reces­sion!
Please bring pens and paper, espe­cial­ly mark­ers and flipchart-like paper, to share if you have any

FOOD NOT BOMBS…
is a net­work of inde­pen­dent direct action groups. They all use food that is being thrown away, cook deli­cious veg­an meals and serve it for free to any hun­gry per­son! Come with us for a bit of skip­ping (get­ting food from the bins!), veg­an cook­ing, serv­ing and clean­ing! It’s polit­i­cal, fun and empow­er­ing!

BASICS OF GENETICS
what’s a cell? what’s a chro­mo­some? what’s the DNA? what’s a gene? what’s a genome? what’s a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­ism? what’s cloning? etc.
Have you ever asked your­self these ques­tions?
We’ll try to talk about all that togeth­er!

INTERNET ARCHITECTURE / PHILOSOPHY
The idea for the dis­cus­sion is to look at the way the tech­ni­cal aspects of the inter­net have polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions. Some of these are well known, oth­ers not so well known. Start­ing
from a few tech­ni­cal points I hope the group can dis­cuss gen­er­al ideas around the hack­er cul­ture that has shaped the inter­net, as it applies to social net­works and polit­i­cal engage­ment. Some sam­ple prin­ci­ples from inter­net engi­neer­ing cul­ture:
“Be con­ser­v­a­tive in what you do; be lib­er­al in what you accept from oth­ers.” (Jon Pos­tel)
“We reject: kings, pres­i­dents and vot­ing. We believe in: rough con­sen­sus and run­ning code.” (David D. Clarke)

deschooling_society@lists.riseup.net
http://londonfreeschool.wordpress.com