Good news!

[dougald hine]

Hi everyone -

Firstly, apologies for the long silence over the summer. As you might remember, we were originally hoping to run a free school this month, using Limehouse Town Hall as a venue. For various reasons, that plan didn't quite come together.

However, the good news is that the organisers of the John Berger: Art & Property Now exhibition at Somerset House have asked us to come and take over the spaces around the exhibition during its closing week. So, Redrawing the Maps will happen - from 5-10 November.

It's obviously a different context to what we'd originally imagined, but it feels appropriate that we'll be book-ending an exhibition which begins with the more formal events over the next few days:

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/46/product_id/1258?session_id=1339003299a68d348869523411ea305e51af68299f

http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event131392.html

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/newsevents/events/eventsrecords/2012/August/john-berger-conference.aspx

Ben Vickers, Arthur Swindells and I will be coordinating plans for November. We're aiming to stick largely to the "free school" format, inspired by Temporary School of Thought and the Really Free School. Right now, we're putting a new website together, which should be live very soon. In the mean time, there's a holding page with some basic information here:

http://www.redrawingthemaps.org.uk/

Once the proper site is up, we'd appreciate your help spreading the word about it.

Meanwhile, have a think about sessions you'd be interested in hosting in November. There are a few principles that seem to have been implicit in the various discussions over the past few months, that might be helpful in thinking about this:

1. Our aim is not to create a spectacle with an audience, but to offer an open invitation to anyone who wants to host or take part in a conversation, collaboration or workshop within the space.

2. We take Berger's work, with all its breadth of themes and forms, as a means of orienting ourselves - but not as a tight focus. The hope is to revisit some of the paths his work has opened to us and to follow them in new directions.

3. We are particularly keen to bring together people from the different generations and different worlds to whom Berger's work has mattered. As hosts, we'd like to help make those connections and bring those conversations together.

It would be great to have some proposed sessions up on the site as guest posts, so as to give people some clues as to what kind of thing they might propose and/or expect. We can use this list to kick around ideas, if that's helpful.

Once again, sorry it's taken so long to offer an update - it's only in the last few weeks that plans came together with King's Cultural Institute, who are hosting the exhibition. 

I hope you're as excited as we are about the possibilities for November!

D.

--

Dougald Hine

http://dougald.co.uk/

[mark narayn]

This sounds great Dougald, and I look forward to getting involved for parts of it (depends on my work schedule in Norwich).

Mark

[Pamela McLean]

Hi Dougald and all.

Good to see this back. Wondering how I do/might relate to it.....

I'll help spread the word.

I remain very positive about my experiences with Temporary School of Thought and the Really Free School and would like to help with a follow-up (which would be a "count me in").

However I also remain almost as ignorant about John Berger's work as I was earlier in the year. (which would be a "count me out").

Earlier in the year I read one/some link(s) Dougald sent. I was positive about the idea of monthly discussion times around various John Berger readings - but as I come from an "online non-formal learning culture" it didn't occur to me that these monthly discussions would be F2F - and include travel time etc. When that became obvious I didn't join in. So I'm still an outsider regarding the John Berger influence (is this because I'm not an arts degree person I wonder).

This means that ref

2. We take Berger's work, with all its breadth of themes and forms, as a means of orienting ourselves - but not as a tight focus. The hope is to revisit some of the paths his work has opened to us and to follow them in new directions.

3. We are particularly keen to bring together people from the different generations and different worlds to whom Berger's work has mattered. As hosts, we'd like to help make those connections and bring those conversations together.

I have no idea of what kind of paths, connections and conversations these might be.

This means that ref

1. Our aim is ... to offer an open invitation to anyone who wants to host or take part in a conversation, collaboration or workshop within the space.

I can't respond to that as I have no idea what kind of conversations, collaborations or workshops might be relevant - but I'll continue to lurk with interest, look forward to learning more, and plan to come along- as well as spreading the word.

Pamela

--
Redrawing the Maps | 5-10 November 2012 | Somerset House |
www.redrawingthemaps.org.uk
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Redrawing the Maps" group.
To post to this group, send an email to redrawin...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to redrawingthema...@googlegroups.com.