Creative Activism School Launched
Some good friends just launched the “School of Creative Activism” in the UK. They award “Pirate Certificate in Creative Activism.” Here’s more info:
This class is aimed at creative people (filmmakers, photographers, artists, designers, digital media practitioners etc) and activists who want to build on their knowledge and skills in order to support a social cause, grass roots organisation, advocacy group, charity or an issue that you feel strongly about. We’ll be opening up the classroom in a number of ways, including providing talks and podcasts and openly working with communities of practice to share and build knowledge and resources. Our aim is to explore and encourage creativity as a means to promote citizen activism.
Approach
#creativact
The course is built around the principles of Connectivism - through which networks play a fundamental role in the learning and knowledge process:
At its heart, connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks. Knowledge is, on this theory, literally the set of connections formed by actions and experience.
Based on this, and in order for us to start sharing content, ideas, resources and feedback, we’ll be using the #creativact hashtag. So if you are posting up blog posts, tweets, videos and photographs please use this tag in order for everyone to be able to see and find your work.
Our Class
As well as running as an open course the Creative Activism Class is part of a course from the second year BA (Hons) Media Production Degree at Coventry University in the UK. It is run by a number of colleagues in the Department of Media at the Coventry School of Art and Design with the help and support of a number of partners, contributors and institutions from outside the University.
For our second year students the class plays an important role in their thematic and practical development- enabling them to address social, cultural and political issues, and put this knowledge into practice through creative thinking and media practice.
We hope the course will be challenging, inspiring and thought provoking for them and you. Enabling us all to build our knowledge into the outside world as we continue to develop as practitioners, professionals and people.
Get involved
We are looking forward to seeing your work, hearing your questions, contributing discussions and generally supporting and engaging with the creative activism community. If you have any questions or ideas to help build the community then please follow and comment in our networks above, or alternatively contact Pete Woodbridge woodbridgepj (at) gmail.com or @petewoodbridge
Although the course is not accredited for non-paying participants, everyone who engages and completes the course will be awarded with an Pirate Certificate in Creative Activism. You will also have a chance to have your work published in our digital magazine/journal that we will be producing at the end of the project.