We are leading a workshop called Make things, think critically, work together at Upgrade Yourself Festival at Somerset, 7-8 August 2026. Upgrade Yourself Festival connects emerging creatives (ages 16 – 30) with trailblazing talent and industry experts, with inspiring talks, workshops, mentoring sessions and more.
Elastic Money: A Lexicon of Debt was a results of a year-long creative process with women in Bootle, Liverpool. It captures a creative and discursive process by The Alternative School of Economics produced by Rule of Threes and Sefton Libraries as part of At The Library in Bootle.
Buy it here
Buy Gboyega Odubanjo’s incredible work about East London here
Tree Time explores how human relationships with trees help us connect with the epic timescales of environmental life and crisis. In conversation with Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck, Tree Time hears from people living and working in Thamesmead on walks to visit their favourite trees. In conversations reflecting upon their relationship the natural environment, they talk about human interactions with time – such as capitalist time and political timescales – as well as the economics of trees, the effects of the environment on people’s mental health, and much more.
Hosted by Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck (The Alternative School of Economics), with guests Aruhan Galieva, a British-Kazakh actor, comedian, and activist, Ian Holt, Estate Manager of Lesnes Abbey Woods, Debo Adegoke, an Nigerian-born artist living in Thamesmead, and Camilla Allen, a landscape architect and environmental historian who shares ideas from her book The Politics of Street Trees, during a public walk around Thamesmead.
Listen to it on our Tree Time page
When we are silent we are still afraid is a phrase from ‘A Litany for Survival’, a poem by American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Made with designers Europa, and letterpress printed at Book Works. Proceeds to Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). Buy it here
As part of our research project Tree Time, we are hosting an afternoon of talks, discussions and presentations by invited speakers Chamkaur Ghag (Professor of Physics at UCL) and Chiara Famengo (Phytology/Bethnal Green Nature Reserve) about the relationship between trees and expansive ideas of deep time and human time, as a useful tool for thinking about our connection with the natural environment, ecological complexity, and imagining the future.
Sunday 23rd July, 4-6pm, Free
TACO!, 2 Cygnet Square, Thamesmead, London, SE2 9FA
More info HERE
We are participating in Economics the Blockbuster – Its not Business as Usual at The Whitworth, Manchester, 30th June-22nd October 2023, presented as part of Manchester International Festival, MIF23.
We will be showing The Neoliberal Imagination, a new project and installation that draws on conversations we initiated with striking workers in Manchester to question how neoliberalism affects our everyday lives and our capacity to imagine our world anew.
Using fiction, political protest and meditative listening, the installation creates a space for collective imagining. It comprises three set-like structures forming a dilapidated cabin inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s science fiction novel ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ (1971). Inside the cabin there are a series of audio guides for the imagination which you are invited to listen to whilst surrounded by four banners made by Manchester banner-maker Lou Miller, and a small library of books on the subject and critique of neoliberalism.
‘Economics the Blockbuster’ explores new ways of being, working and doing business, asking How can artists reimagine and disrupt conventional ideas of value, ownership, trade and economy? How might artists inspire us to practice our economic life more equitably, radically and sustainably?
Other artists and organisations in the show: Association de Arte Útil, Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) and Renzo Martens, Company Drinks, Goldin+Senneby, Kathrin Böhm and Kuba Szreder (Centre for Plausible Economies), lumbung Kios, Owen Griffiths and Alessandra Saviotti, Rosalie Schweiker, and Tŷ Pawb.
Image: Mapping the Neoliberal Imagination, 2023. Commissioned by the Whitworth, University of Manchester
Read an interview we did with Poppy Bowers about The Neoliberal Imagination, a project we are developing with the Whitworth, Manchester.
We spoke to Curator and Interim Head of Exhibitions at the Whitworth, Poppy Bowers, about neoliberalism, time travel, and the imagination, and reflected on our ideas and motivations behind putting these ideas together. The interview is available to read online at Decentralising Political Economies, a research platform developed as a partnership between The Whitworth (The University of Manchester), The Institute of Art and Technology at Liverpool John Moores University’s School of Art and Design, and the Association of Arte Útil. Design by textbook studio.
In collaboration with muf architecture/art, we are leading this workshop to explore what a feminist approach to making architecture might look like from the perspective of resources and relationships. Drawing on the idea of ‘Radmin’ (Radical Admin – pioneered by artist and feral economist Kate Rich), participants will collectively define the elements of a feminist budget, such as resources, organising, hierarchy and time.
The workshop accompanies the exhibition Space as Matrix, details here: https://arch.ethz.ch/en/news-und-veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen/details.space-as-matrix.65850.html and s short write-up by curator Geraldine Tedder: https://womenwritingarchitecture.org/collection/space-as-matrix/
29 November, 5-7pm CET
ETH, Zurich
We are running a free workshop with Mapping Local Ecologies in the Goldsmiths College Allotments. Havens in the City will use drawing and listening to think about havens in the city. Exploring what a haven in the city means, we will touch on ideas of escape, and how the urban built environment effects our bodies and minds, and discuss the importance of access to free, public or collectively run spaces in an increasingly privatised city-scape, where property is used as a proxy investment bank.
The workshop will take place in Goldsmiths Allotments which was set up in 2015 as a place for staff and students to grow their own food and reap the social and therapeutic benefits of gardening.
Mapping Local Ecologies is curated by Fiona Irene Graf, Yurika Imaseki, Edward Longville, and Ankita Mukherji, and supported by Goldsmiths CCA.
Saturday 21st May 2022, 2-4pm
Goldsmiths Allotments, Lewisham Way, London SE14 6NW
RSVP through the website or shorturl.at/ktyCR
We are leading a workshop with Up Projects Constellations cohort about change and artists practice. The workshop isn’t public, but follows a public event, one of their Constellations Assemblies, called ‘How can socially engaged practice inspire structural change?’. Details below. We will be joined by two members of AMPLA (Association of Latin American parents) who we worked with during our residency with Gasworks.
Constellations is curated by UP Projects, working in partnership with Flat Time House, London and Liverpool Biennial, with curatorial contributions from independent writer and curator Jes Fernie.
To book, visit bit.ly/Assemblies2
On April 1st, as the energy price cap increased, we held a workshop in Bootle Liverpool about understanding how the energy market works and the causes of the price hike, whilst preparing, cooking and eating a delicious slow-cooked lentil daal.
During March 2022 Rabbits Road Institute Library travelled to the Strand shopping centre in Bootle, Liverpool, to be installed at Moon in Venus, a space for local women to come together to collectively heal from the burden of debt, learn how we got here, and start to imagine a future beyond their current financial situation.
Conceived by Jeanne van Heeswijk in 2019, Moon in Venus is a great project co-organised by Venus Charity and Rule of Threes, with a month long programme devised and facilitated by Phoebe Bachman and Fauziya Johnson in response to the cost of living crisis and the growing need for access to services and support with money and debt management in the area.
We chose a selection of books from the Library that delve into subjects relating to women, economics, power, working together and activism.
ruleofthrees.co.uk/a-womens-manifesto-for-living-well-with-debt/
Reading The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown. Reading is encouraged before the session but not essential.
This session is hosted online with Brighton CCA, responding to themes in their current exhibition by Lloyd Corporation.
Wednesday 23 March, 6:30-7:45pm UTC
Email P.Wright@Brighton.ac.uk for zoom link and texts
Our poster series Artists’ Economies / Kunstnerøkonomier / Dáiddáriid ekonomiijat has been pasted up around Oslo and in UKS’ exhibition 100 Years of Conviviality: What you can see is what you can imagine at Kunstnernes Hus, Olso, until 2 January 2022.
UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society) is an Oslo-based artist membership organisation. Founded by artists for artists in 1921, it is now celebrating it’s centenary with this exhbition and programme- “This exhibition is a story of struggle and conviviality, of disagreement and discourse, of gossip and cheap wine in the early hours, of heartbreak and collegial banter, of pushing each other to be better artists, and challenging what it means to be a good friend, citizen, and human in the world.”
The posters, designed by An Endless Supple, use the language and form of surveys to ask questions about ethical, financial and creative challenges faced by artists. Stemming from research into current working conditions for artists in Norway, the work asks questions concerning the (financial) lives of and the limits of artists’ political voice. This new work is inspired by an exhibition at UKS in 1971, in which members of UKS installed material from economist Aina Helgesen’s survey Kunstnerkår (Norwegian artists’ economic and social situation). The posters are in English, Norwegian and Northern Sámi.
13 November 2021 – 2 January 2022
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, and around the city
We are taking part in the Decentralising Political Economies Roaming Symposium on 19th November. Decentralising Political Economies was started by The Whitworth (The University of Manchester), The City Lab (Liverpool John Moores School of Art and Design), and the Association of Arte Util. It is an ongoing project that seeks to use physical (and virtual) archives to be used as resources for social, political, and economic change through art.
Our workshop, Neoliberalism and the Imagination, will use guided meditation, collective brainstorming and group discussion to explore personal and everyday relationships with the imagination and neoliberal structures and values. For this workshop, we are collaborating with Marcus Coates who will be leading the meditation.
Thursday 19th November 2021
10am – 1pm UTC, online
We have been working on a new commission and workshop for UKS’ 100th anniversary program 100 Years of Conviviality. UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society) is an Oslo-based institution for contemporary art and a Norwegian membership organisation. Founded by artists for artists in 1921, it has since established itself as one of Norway’s core experimental venues for the arts.
We will be hosting an in-person workshop in Oslo on 28th October as part of Seminar 2: Artists Organising Artists. The workshop will explore the mechanisms that move personal experience into the political realm, and facilitate discussion around communities and support structures.
For the exhibition What you can see is what you can imagine we will be presenting a new poster commission across the city.
Image: UKS archive
Thursday 28th October 2021, 12–5pm CET
Deichman Bjørvika, Oslo
Tickets available here
Rabbits Road Institute Library is an ongoing project, and over the last few months we have been having exciting and inspiring conversations with people who have really interesting and insightful projects and methodologies of practice that resonate with our thinking about it: Rebecca Davies and Anna Francis (Portland Inn Project), Jeanne van Heeswijk, Jo Marsh (Ty Pawb), Adele Patrick (Glasgow Women’s Library) and Aqui Thami (Sister Library).
Read more information and and quotes from the interviews on the Rabbits Road Institute Library here along with drawings by artist Markus Vater
We are pleased to launch a new free digital publication. produced as part of a residency with Arts Catalyst, called The End of the Present, which draws together critical reflection, speculative fiction, and collective research to consider the ‘long crises’ of capitalism and the environment.
View or download the pdf HERE.
Read more about it on our project page HERE
We are taking part in an event about creative methods for studying ‘elites’, with Professor Caroline Knowles (Goldsmiths University), organised by Sarah Kunz (University of Bristol) and Katie Higgins (University of Sheffield). The event will explore the potential of art for studying the rich; the potential of art to generate public engagement on wealth inequality; and what might be productive conversations and collaborations between the academic and creative sectors in researching the rich. We will be talking about our project The Rich as a Minority Group
Friday 11th June 2021, 5-6pm
Book FREE tickets here
We interviewed Back and Forth Collective (Mei Homma, Natsumi Sakamoto, Asako Taki), Dr. Jennifer Clarke, Fionn Duffy and Sarah McWhinney about their film Speculative Fiction: Practicing Collectively, 2020. The film is being screened on e-flux as part of the Artists Cinema programme Faraway, So Close, convened by Koki Tanaka.
The film, collectively produced by an experimental collaboration and dialogue between artists in Japan and Scotland, explores contemporary feminist practice, speculative fiction and the possibility of digital space within this. Connecting over our work on True Currency, We talked to them about collaboration, feminist economics and Ursula le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.
The film and interview are available online here from 17th-21st May. The interview will remain online after the screening.
Join Gboyega Odubanjo in conversation with poet Kayo Chingonyi, to launch the newly published pamphlet Two stops short of Barking by Odubanjo, made whilst in residence at Rabbits Road Institute Library. The event will also include poetry readings, a screening of The Man Phoning Mum by artist John Smith and music by rapper OSOM. The pamphlet will be available to purchase online at the event.
Gboyega Odubanjo’s writing rubs together the many different parts of his world: London, Nigerian culture, religion, music, parties, histories of migration. The poems and interviews in Two stops short of Barking define a relationship to his home town of Dagenham, in East London.
Wednesday 5th May, 7-8pm
Book your free place via eventbrite.
Two stops short of Barking is available to order in our shop, and at the following book shops: Newham Books, London Review Bookshop and Pages of Hackney in London, and Good Press in Glasgow.
Two stops short of Barking is published by The Alternative School of Economics, London 2021, and designed by Design Print Bind. It was supported by Pen to Print Creative Writing Programme and Arts Council England.
As part of Rabbits Road Institute Library’s tour to Barking & Dagenham, we are leading some online creative writing workshops with local writing Pen to Print, an organisation based in Barking & Dagenham libraries which supports aspiring writers and artists.
Writing Together is a series of three workshops throughout March that explore experimental and creative ways to collaborate using writing, producing co-authored pieces of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. No previous experience required.
Writing Together – Poetry
Tuesday 2nd March, 2:30-4:30pm
This workshop focuses on using the Golden Shovel form to help us write poems by working with limitations. Borrowing from other poems, lyrics, phrases or even newspaper clippings, participants will write their own poems inspired by and using other peoples words. The Golden Shovel form is a poetic form created by award winning poet Terrance Hayes in homage to poet Gwendolyn Brooks.
Writing Together – Fiction
Tuesday 16th March, 2:30-4:30pm
The second workshop focuses on creative games and writing techniques that will stitch together participants writing, bouncing off each other’s ideas, to form a complete co-authored short story by the end of the session.
Writing Together – Non-Fiction
Tuesday 30th March, 2:30-4:30pm
Drawing on manifestos from a variety of artistic movements, we will look at ways in which writing can be used to make public declarations of ideas, principals & beliefs. Participants will work together to produce a workshop manifesto by the end of the session.
To book, click on the links above for each workshop. Places are limited but there will be a waiting list.
We are delighted to launch our new website for Rabbits Road Institute Library, www.rabbitsroadinstitutelibrary.uk
Designed by An Endless Supply, the website features new images, texts and videos of the books in the collection, as well as a search feature, and notices of upcoming events about our current project in Barking and Dagenham.
Please take a look and let us know what you think.
Ruth will be leading a workshop especially for Eastside Projects’ EOP members on Thursday 18th March. Drawing on our experience of making True Currency: About Feminist Economics, this workshop will explore the ways that podcast-making can be a meaningful part of art practice. We will listen to a range of podcasts and share tips and learnings. The workshop part of the Toolkit series for EOP members. See their website or email amelia@eastsideprojects.org for more information.
We have been invited to host an online Free Drawing School workshop for Hopitalfield in Arbroath, Scotland. The Free Drawing School Online is a free series of online events specially designed by artists, inviting people to get involved at home, guided live with artists.
We will be sharing instructions on Saturday 27 February at 3pm on the website and Facebook event, and will be live via Zoom to introduce the challenge. There will be time to make work over the next two hours, then we will gather together again on Zoom at 5pm to share what people have made.
Saturday 27th February, 3pm-5pm
For more information and booking visit www.hospitalfield.org.uk
The is the final event in a series of workshops for our project The End of the Present with Arts Catalyst. The talk and discussion is about human perception and the psychology of inaction in relation to climate crisis, as well as the relationship between extractive processes and corporate ir/responsibility.
We will hear from Kate Jeffery, Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience at UCL and Bobby Banerjee, Professor of Management and Associate Dean of Research and Enterprise at Cass Business School. The event will also include time for questions, group activity and collective discussion.
This event follows on from two public mapping workshops which looked at the relationship between linear time and financial and environmental crises. Asking ‘where does a crisis begin and end’? the workshops used co-research processes to collectively re-map events, which have contributed to the ‘long crises’ of capitalism and its impact on the environment. Each workshop focused on different time periods – the first concentrating on the last 400 years of human activity, and the second reaching into deep time to try to understand both the physical preconditions and human perception of our environment, its resources and resulting crisis.
1.00pm – 4.00pm, online, see Arts Catalyst for more information
Part of our ongoing residency with Arts Catalyst, The End of the Present, this workshop is an experiment in co-research processes, and will include time for individual research and breakout groups, as well as mapping onto an accessible, online platform. During the workshop we will be joined by several researchers who will share their field of expertise and there’ll be time for questions and discussions.
Wed 28 October 2020, 1-5pm
More information here
- your name
- your area of interest
- tell us something about your background, work or interests & why you would like to join the workshop
We have been invited by curator & writer Geraldine Tedder to lead an online workshop, focusing on our podcast series True Currency: about Feminist Economics. The study morning will use audio extracts & transcripts from the series to explore ideas in relation to Feminist Economics such as unpaid care, the potential of temporalities that sit alongside capitalist time, and how these might interrupt and challenge the institutions, language and systems of our current economic model. It will end with responses from Kathrin Bentele, Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff & Lucie Kolb.
Thursday 22nd October, 9am-12noon
The workshop is now fully booked
Our Feminist Economics reading group, initiated during our Participatory Residency at Gasworks, is continuing over Zoom. This month’s text is an extract from The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, which considers the distinction between work and labour. You can download the text here.
Upcoming dates, all 7.30-8.45pm:
14 October 2020: The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
12 November 2020: Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid During the Covid-19 Crisis, Ed. Marina Sitrin & Colectiva Sembrar
10 December 2020: Heart Of The Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain by Berverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe
To join the mailing list and to receive the Zoom link, email mail@alternativeschoolofeconomics.org
Advance reading encouraged but not essential, as we will read parts of the text collectively in the session. All genders welcome.
Cathy Wade, who took part in our Time(un)line: Mapping Crises, workshop held in July, has written an article for the Quietus about the experience of online co-research, and how cultural changes that have happened during lockdown have opened the potential for new perspectives on the world. The workshop was the first in a series of public events that are part of our residency The End of the Present, with Arts Catalyst.
Read it here
>>here <<
Our podcast series, True Currency: About Feminist Economics is featured on Art Review as the Work of the Week: “..there is a naivety to the let’s-start-from-scratch approach in the way the series has been produced that is radically useful and seems indebted to the artistic process in that it approaches its subject anew without preconception. It refuses to accept the norms while also acknowledging expertise (if Beale and Feneck are the artists, think of Stephenson et al as the fabricator they’ve lent upon to realise the project). Beale and Feneck’s approach raises the question, if an artist was given a commission to remake the economy, or to remake the way society is structured, what might it look like? The rest of the series, yet to be broadcast, promises vital listening.”
Click here: >here< for the full article
We are delighted to announce Gboyega Odubanjo as the new Writer in Residence at Rabbits Road Institute Library. Gboyega is a British-Nigerian poet born and raised in East London. His pamphlet, While I Yet Live, was published by Bad Betty Press in 2019. He is a Roundhouse Resident Artist and editor of bath magg.
What was Barking & Dagenham like when you were young, or when you first moved there?
In what ways do you think it has changed?
How would you describe Barking & Dagenham to someone unfamiliar with the borough?
How do you describe Barking & Dagenham to yourself?
Could you briefly tell me of a memory (whatever you like) that you have of Barking & Dagneham?
We’re very pleased to announce a residency and public programme with Arts Catalyst, examining linear time and its relationship with economic and environmental crises. The first public event takes place online on Friday 31 July from 1 till 5pm with a workshop experimenting with co-research processes as a way of exploring global financial and ecological crises. Spaces are limited so please book a spot if you’d like to attend, or join the waiting list: https://www.artscatalyst.org/workshop-timeunline-mapping-crises-led-alternative-school-economics
Image credit:
Advancing always towards the future, one can return to the same point in spacetime.
Drawing inspired by illustrations in The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
Today we launch our new podcast series, True Currency: About Feminist Economics. The first episode, If Women Counted, starts the series by asking ‘What is feminist economics? How are women part of, and excluded from, the economy?’. We start to unpack the issues around work, care and parenthood. Featuring members of the Women’s Budget Group; a Latin American parents group in Brixton; workshop participants at a children’s centre; and artists reimagining local economies.
True Currency: About Feminist Economics is a 6 part podcast. We draw on our experiences as artists and mothers, and speak to academic researchers, policy experts, community leaders and activists, to explore financial inequality, feminism, intersectionality, labour exploitation, unpaid work, care, unionisation and reproductive labour.
Available at www.gasworks.org.uk and to download via Apple, Spotify & Stitcher
—————– DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 29th JUNE —————–
We are looking for writers, aspiring writers, or artists working with writing in their work, to be writer in residence for five months in Rabbits Road Institute Library. The Alternative School of Economics originally developed the Library in Manor Park, Newham, and now it is touring to Barking & Dagenham, to be hosted by Company Drinks Pavilion in Barking and Dagenham Park during 2020. We will be working with local people, inviting them to engage with the Library in different ways, including through a partnership with Pen to Print.
The residency is a chance to creatively explore Rabbits Road Institute Library and develop new writing in response. We are interested in critical and creative approaches that engage with the Library. This might include responding to individual books or authors, exploring specific ideas or themes found in the collection, or the concept of the Library as a collectively made artwork.
Applications are welcome from those who live or work in Barking & Dagenham and neighbouring boroughs of Redbridge, Newham and Havering, especially encouraging writing by underrepresented artists and writers.
If Covid-19 restrictions are still in place during the specified residency period, we will work with the resident to enable access to the books, find creative solutions, or if necessary or draw up a new timeline. Applicants do not need to address this in their applications.
Due to workload pressures in lockdown, we have decided to move the deadline and selection process back by two weeks.
NEW DEADLINE for applications, Monday 29th June 2020, 5pm
The interviews will take place in early July and the residency will begin in mid July.
Dowload full PDF here >here<
We have been hosting a regular reading group on Feminist Economics at Gasworks as part of our current residency, where we are researching women and work, parenting, intersectionality and how austerity effects women. We are now carrying on this reading group as a monthly Zoom meeting during Covid-19 social distancing. If you would like to join please email mail@alternativeschoolofeconomics.org and we will send you an extract of the text and details of the next session.
All genders welcome. Advance reading encouraged but not essential, as we will read parts of the text collectively.
Session 1: Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth.
Session 2: Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, by Caroline Criado-Perez.
Session 3: If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics by Marilyn Waring.
Session 4: Your Money or Your Life – Feminist Perspectives on Economy, pamphlet series edited by Bonnie Fortune & Lise Skoul Economic Meltdown, or What An Iceberg Can Tell Us About The Economy, by Katherine Gibson; Trade as Public Realm / Economy as Public Space, by Kathrin Böhm; The Problems with Work, by Kathi Weeks; The Ecology of Supply, by Kate Rich.
Session 5: Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac & Molly Smith.
Session 6: Maternal Encounters & Enduring Time by Lisa Baraitser
Session 7: Wages Against Housework by Sylvia Frederici.
Session 8: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power by Lola Olufemi
SixtyEight Art Institute’s new exhibition ‘Learning by Doing: A Politics of Practice’ features artworks and projects by The Alternative School of Economics, FACTORY WORKERS UNITE (Tina Helen and Søren Thilo Funder), Arendse Krabbe in collaboration with lichen and Mirko Nikolić, and Rosa-Johan Uddoh – curated by Line Ellegaard. We are showing work from our project The Rich as a Minority Group.
Curated by Line Ellegaard, the exhibition aims to shed light on the political and pedagogical dimension of artists’ practices – what and how they do, rather than the objects produced – to examine the transformative potential of art. The exhibition draws its title from the American philosopher John Dewey’s idea that learning should be relevant and practical, not just passive and theoretical, and combines this with the active knowledge production of contemporary art, which often incorporates more abstract disciplines such as politics, economics and philosophy in the artistic process.
SixtyEight Art Institute, Gothersgade 167, 1123 Copenhagen, Denmark
4 October – 16 November 2019
Wednesday & Thursday 11am-6pm, Friday 11am-5pm, Saturday 1-5pm
More info here
As part of a series of events running in the lead-up to the Art Licks Weekend 2019, we are hosting Challenging interdependence: structures for working together – a workshop and discussion responding to the Art Licks Weekend theme of Interdependence. We’ll be asking the questions:
Who are you dependant on?
Who depends on you?
What do you value about your interdependence?
What is undervalued?
Workshop and Discussion
Saturday 12th October 2019, 2 – 4pm, free
Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London SE11 5RH
Image: workshop documentation from The Britishness Project, The Alternative School of Economics, Firstsite & The Gilberd School, 2019
Ruth took part in Clear Spot, a series of Frieze Week Specials on Resonance FM examining artists’ interest in economics. Produced and presented by artist Fari Bradley (https://twitter.com/faribrad) the show was guest-produced by Pierre D’Alancaissez, founder and director of Waterside Contemporary (now wednesday (wednesday.gallery)). With Kathrin Böhm, artist and creator of projects such as Company Drinks, artist Ruth Beale, co-founder of the Alternative School of Economics and Hilary Koob Sassen, a sculptor and filmmaker.
Over the next eight months we are exploring feminist economics as part of the Gasworks Participatory Residency Programme: Connecting Communities. We plan to initiate workshops and conversations between women-led groups, archives, campaign groups, academics and individuals identifying as women who are interested in these ideas, and actively involved in feminist economic projects. We will produce a series of podcasts of women’s voices that ask questions, make connections and share ideas. We are excited to be working closely with the participation evaluators FOTL (Future of the Left) to help develop an evaluation framework for the project.
Image: Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics. Source: Wikicommons
Rabbits Road Institute Library and Old Manor Park Library are featured in ‘Making It Happen: New Community Architecture’ an exhibition at RIBA, London. The show tells the stories behind four very different examples of new or reimagined public spaces.
30 January – 27 April 2019
RIBA, 66 Portland Place London, W1B 1AD
The Alternative School of Economics is in-residence at Phytology this Summer & Autumn. Phytology is an artist led project exploring use, value, resilience and function of wildness within urban ecosystems.
Our commission, ‘Speaking to the City’, is a changing series of statements that challenge the City and its logic of prosperity through financial growth. The message will evolve over 2 months, as new words are spelt out accross the billboard.
Free lunch, campfire, and talk, Saturday 1st September, 1-2.30pm
Billboard on view 1 September – 31 October 2018
Phytology, Middleton St, London E2 9RR
Do you feel like your voice is heard? is a symposium at Firstsite Gallery about identity and individual voice. Through a combination of talks, performances and screenings the event invites discussion about the importance of female autonomy, activism and equality.
The title of the symposium references an artwork we made with students from Gilberd School that we worked with as part of the Britishness Project (you can see this work here). We are drawing on this collaboration for our presentation and workshop at the symposium. Titled: Do you feel like your story is heard? we will the audience and participants of the day to write their own biography, and for those that wished to – to read out their story for others to hear. We will read the life stories, and edit and extract slogans, and make them into badges to be worn as personal/political statements in solidarity with womens’ stories of fighting oppression.
Other speakers at the symposium are: Solma Ahmed, Tess Brooks, Hasina Uddin, Ali Wilkin and Jaki Whyte, Rachel Walton, Charlotte Winters and Marlene Smith.
23 June 2018, 11am-5pm
Firstsite, Colchester
Taking place at The Women’s Library and UCL Art Museum, this study day examines the ways in which the position of women in British art education has changed since the first women were admitted to the Slade school of Fine Arts on equal terms to men, just over 100 years ago. It looked at issues of gender equality, work-life balance, professional development and networks of influence.
Topics of discussion include the social function of art, co-production in education and the redistribution of authorship. We will discuss our collaborative practice and our education and professional development as women artists. The leading question for our presentation is: Are women artists leading the way in producing socially engaged art offering relevant alternatives or compliments to formal education, questioning notions of equality and access to information? Other contributors include Hilary Powell, Professor Susan Collins and Sarah Rowles.
21 Jun 2018 10am-5pm
Women’s Library at LSE & UCL Art Museum
www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/whats-on/instruction-and-influence-women-art-education
We have been invited to contribute to an evening discussion of William Morris’ text ‘Useful Work V’s Useless Toil’, along with Sophie Hope and Mark Hooper. This event is part of Bank Job, a project by Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell. Part of this project includes the setting up of Hoe Street Central Bank where Hilary and Dan are hosting a series of ‘Money Talks’ and printing 50,000 Bank Job currency notes to be sold at face value or as artworks – with the money raised to go to local initiatives and the HSCB Debt abolition fund. More info here
“…worthy work carries with it the hope of pleasure in rest, the hope of pleasure in what it makes, the hope of pleasure in our daily creative skill. All other work but this is worthless. It is slave’s work – mere toiling to live so that we may live to toil.” William Morris. 1885.
How do Morris’ writing on economy, society and the meaning of work resonate today? On the site of HSCB’s collective money printing action we hear from the man himself prompting a conversation around the realities of useful work versus useless toil today. We look for ways out of wasted time and lives of debt servitude be it through refusal, co-operation or universal basic income seeking out purpose, meaning, participation and community in the idea of work.
22 March, 8pm
HSCB – Hoe Street Central Bank, 151-155 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London
Image: 50 Saira’s, from The Bank Job
As part of the Beveridge 2.0 Festival at LSE, Amy Feneck has been asked to be on a panel to debate the question ‘Is Richness a social problem?’ The event proposes that richness needs to be challenged because it is interconnected with poverty.
The event is organised and introduced by Katharina Hecht, and the panel included Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, Tania Burchardt, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Sam Friedman, and urban anthropologist based in LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, Luna Glucksberg. The discussion is chaired by Martin White Professor of Sociology at LSE and co-Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute Mike Savage.
Update: A recording of the discussion can be found here.
The Alternative School of Economics has been commissioned by Firstsite Gallery as part of The Britishness Project, an ambitious programme of exhibitions, events and workshops for young people of school age regarding cultural identity reflecting on the EU Referendum.
We are working students from the Gilberd School in Colchester to devise artworks around their identity, thinking about punk, fashion, performance, youth cultures.. and Brexit.
The culmination of our module with BA Graphic Design, Camberwell College of Arts students, Nation 283 is a new country set up in the centre of Peckham. With its roots in visual communication Nation 283 challenges us to think about design in relation to twenty-first century ideas around work, collectivity and social purpose.
Friday 19 May, 11am – 5pm
We have been asked by Arts Catalyst to lead a workshop which convenes local activists, academics and creative practitioners, to reflect on what role we as active citizens can play regarding the local ecology and its transformations. The project aims to collectively imagine the future of Poole Harbour by exchanging tools, strategies and knowledge.
Test Sites is a three-year programme by Arts Catalyst investigating elements of environmental concern – such as flooding, pollution, and species loss – within specific locations impacted by ecological change. At Poole Harbour, the project primarily focuses on the health and wellbeing of our ecosystems and of ourselves.
11.30am–5.30pm, Sat 8 July 2017, Lighthouse, 21 Kingland Road, Poole BH15 1UG
We are running a module for BA Graphic Design Students at Camberwell College of Art. We are working with designers Europa, who run the 2nd Year programme, using William Morris’ Useful Work Vs Useless Toil as a starting point to think about useful, political design.
The Alternative School of Economics is taking over the Reubens gallery at the V&A Friday Late on 31 March, to present a new installation for the screening of the film The Fiction of Money, and an activity to gather ‘Common Understandings of Money Speak’. This Friday Late, ‘Quids in’, is themed around money to celebrate the launch of the new one pound coin.
6.30-10pm, 31 March 2017, Friday Late, Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL
Ruth Beale is speaking at an event at Somerset House, London, on 21 January 2017, exploring ways to change the economy for the better. She will give a 5 minute ‘rant’ about how transforming education and childcare could transform the economy. Other speakers are Aditya Chakrabortty, Guardian Economics Editor, and Ann Pettifor, founder of Jubilee Debt.
Image: Jeremy Deller, Utopia 2016
Shami Chakrabarti CBE, barrister and human rights campaigner, will give the inaugural annual Lantern Lecture at Rabbits Road Institute. Previously Director of Liberty, an advocacy organisation promoting civil liberties and human rights, Shami Chakrabarti is now a Labour politician and the Shadow Attorney General. Her lecture will address her convictions about the importance of libraries and their relationship to freedom and understanding.
Set up by artists The Alternative School of Economics, and inspired by talks at the library by the same name in the early 20th century, the Lantern Lecture is to be an annual event at Rabbits Road Institute.
12 January 2017 6:30-8:30pm, Rabbits Road Institute, Old Manor Park Library, 835 Romford Road, London E12 5JY
The Alternative School of Economics was invited to take part in Resist, Festival of Ideas and Actions at the LSE, organised by writer and academic Lisa McKenzie. We screened the documentary film we made from our project The Rich as a Minority Group – ‘Fieldwork: finding out about the rich’ and had a discussion and Q&A with curator, writer and academic Sophie Hope. The event was chaired by Katharina Hecht.
We will be launching the permanent Library at Rabbits Road Institute, with an afternoon event of screenings, discussions, readings and refreshments by Company Drinks. The Library is a new artwork by The Alternative School of Economics: a permanent collection of books nominated by collaborators, friends and participants.
22 October 2016, 12.30-6pm, Rabbits Road Institute, Old Manor Park Library, 835 Romford Road, London E12 5JY
On 14 July join us for food and conversation, to mark the launch of our publication made with members of Conversation Club.
14 July 2016, 3-5pm, Rabbits Road Institute, Old Manor Park Library, 835 Romford Road, London E12 5JY
We are contributing to a discussion event on the closing weekend of Artspace’s 40th anniversary exhibition, addressing the question ‘What would a city without artists look like?’. Ruth Beale will talk about The Alternative School of Economics and its role in the development of Rabbits Road Institute as a education, community and creative space in a former library.
18 June 2016, 3-5pm, Spike Island, 133 Cumberland Road, Bristol BS1 6UX
In the degree show of the final year of the Design Interactions course at RCA, the graduates will be joined by the Ladies Art Group to reflect on alternative art schools and other ideas of education. Amy Feneck will take part in an open discussion reflecting on The Alternative School of Economics and Ted Hunt’s The School Of…
28 June 2016, Design Interactions Show, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU
We are speaking about the Rabbits Road Institute project with MA students at the Institute of Education, as part of the module Alternative Models for Art Education. Amy Feneck will give a presentation and lead a discussion around self education, inspired by writings about the Plebs League.
15 June 2016, Institute of Education, London
We are leading a reading group for TEXT2SPEECH, an event organised by the members Valerio Del Baglivo and Jenn Pavlick from the ICA Student Forum. Ivan Illich’s essay The Right to Useful Unemployment calls for the right to useful unemployment as a way to relocate our own existences outside the market rules. We will expecially look at chapter 1, Disabling Market Intensity, which starts with a passage on ‘crises’, and Chapter 6, The Post-Professional Ethos., and how our artistic practice relates to counter-productivity, alternative education and economic strategies.
26 February 2016, 6-8pm, Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London
We have been invited by One of My Kind (OOMK) to take part in an evening of talks and panel discussion about the future of libraries, with Leila Kassir (Librarian at LCC) and Nicholas Brown (Library Manager at Iniva). The event is part of OOMK’s ‘Future Library’ residency at Open School East, in partnership with Bookworks.
21 January 2016, Open School East, The Rose Lipman Building 43 De Beauvoir Rd N1 5SQ