KEC

This is just an example for a page if we want to include a text in the Library that doesn’t have its own layout. (I didn’t find a better text than this lecture from Norway. I think there is a new version of the text, edited by Ewa that she read in online for the event in Korea? If it makes sense to use it here, you can send it to me.)

Facilities

The image you see shows the whole building complex from the outside. It’s the kind of architecture that seems to change its shape each time you look at it. It was designed by remembering different kinds of learning environments. So some details are clearly recognizable, while others are fantasies or black holes. We would like to give you an impression of how it is to study at and navigate through KEC’s building. After this reading you will get to hang-out at the Stuck Cafeteria, one of many venues that are specially designed to meet both the students’ needs and to challenge the curriculum. The Center has a few unique learning facilities, such as the No-Gravity Room, the Borges Library, and the Worry Room. Not to forget the floor of dead-end corridors. One of KEC’s students, Pasmida Budder, who majors in post-emotional design, recently wrote a report, where they describe the school’s set-up. I will read an excerpt:

 

“The No-Gravity room is a space for online classes and is located on the 6th floor. The room is a calibrated pressure chamber and the screens are based on e-ink technology. Because the light and temperature are adjusted for distant and multi-locational learning, we never experience online fatigue there.

The Borges Library has a collection of rare dictionaries, such as the Volcanish dictionary, which helps us communicate with volcanoes who do not speak English. We also have dictionaries for Danish, Treeish, Snowish, Stoneish and Riverish, so that we can communicate with nature.

The Worry Room is on the 2nd floor, and we go there regularly to worry so that we don’t worry when we’re learning or doing homework. The Worry Room is open to all. The more people that worry in the Worry Room, the easier and more time effective it is to worry there. It takes some time to learn to worry only in the Worry Room but once you get the hang of it, you basically only worry in that room. It is emotionally unhygienic if you worry outside of the Worry Room and is equivalent to peeing outside the toilet.

KEC’s administration is on the floor of dead-end corridors. Most students are prohibited from entry due to virus control. The best way to reach the admin is to first call, follow up via email, and then text them.

I like the Dean of our school, a kind and funny person, who always has a joke at hand. She is half-seal, half-human and it’s really great to have a mixed species dean. We trust her to be invested in recruiting beyond the human. Her office is by the gym so she can get to the pool easily, and it’s fun when we can make her happy and flop her tail just by feeding her fresh fish. [end of quote]

However, another aspect that we had to acknowledge when imagining the needs of those attending the school in the future is the anger and anxiety that is related to working institutionally. Because also to be ironic or to be funny about education systems, one has to know the insanity of these real institutions very well. In conversation with friends and colleagues we’ve learned that you’ve apparently got to cross a mountain of anger, boredom, and exhaustion before you find out what kind of free school would be desired. We wondered if we should set up a sort of monastery with a garden for post-teaching teachers on the undeveloped patch of land next to the main building.

Which brings us to the question of admission policies!

Admissions

As KEC is in the making, instead of focusing first on what the candidates need to submit to get in, we’ve started with the question, what are the admission people doing and what are some of the biases or prejudices of the admissions committee. For this reason we have launched another game that you see on this image.

A frequent question we get asked is: Who can be part of KEC? The answer might be: Are you unwanted? Then you can enter Krabstadt. But the issue of accessibility is layered, as in: How does one get into a fictional place and then become a student or a teacher in the Education Center?

I want to quote Isabella Stone here, who is currently the Dean of KEC. In her yearly announcement she wrote: “I come to this position as the first interspecies head of studies, indeed as the first half-seal, half-human, but also as a passionate thinker and practitioner of secondary cycle art education. In my previous work at art academies in the Nordic region, I was frequently the only interspecies presence among colleagues who saw nature and animals as subservient to humans. “Broadened recruitment” is institutional lingo for actively increasing applications from a more diverse group of students and teachers. The systemic failures of Nordic institutions to walk the walk and not just talk in regards to diversity, difference and inclusion has led me to refocus our efforts to assemble the most non-humanly diverse teaching body in the history of the Nordic region. At KEC, we actively recruit nature, both flora and fauna, to teach and study. For example, we just sent out a call to volcanoes, who are very eager to protect and revive the atmosphere.”

As you can imagine, this strategy – to aim high and wide – is often difficult to meet in reality in terms of responding to the different access needs. For example, after the call to volcanoes, Arrabbiata has become one of the teachers, as she didn’t really succeed at getting a raise as nature. When she first came to KEC, she was immediately extremely upset because she couldn’t fit into the office they gave her, it was too small for a volcano. This is one example, where there is already a discrepancy in the architecture of the school: it doesn’t fit the guest teacher who they’ve invited. In that sense we can talk about size in a very concrete and animated way.

Curriculum

What is actually happening in the school? In the planning of KEC, we discussed how to draft a fictitious curriculum that still has an impact. Therefore we all meet at the end of each year and negotiate how to organise time and space in the next year. Each time there are different participants and they are invited to sketch out their visions by means of drawings and diagrams. You see the outcome of the last round on this wall.

For the curriculum we have developed a method around the format of the course descriptions. Before the launch of the semester programme, we ask our staff and guest lecturers to outline a course description that reflects their special interest and research. The submitted draft will then be revised by the KEC Board for Course Development to fulfil the quality assurance standards of the Arctic Bologna Process, which is standardized to address all types of students across geography and species. You see some of the outcomes on these posters here.