Might embracing the Open Paradigm’s vision of education as a human right better equip formal art education organisations – such as art schools, workshops and galleries – to fulfil UNESCO’s right to participate in cultural life? What happens when artistic learners deliberately engage with emerging educational practices such as the open paradigm (Winn 2015), paragogy (Corneli 2011, 2016) and para-academia (Wardrop 2014)? To partly address this question, this lecture will reflect on an open education course developed by Neil Mullholland, Dr Jake Watts, Emma Balkind and Beth Dynowski. Contemporary Art & Open Learning(2020-) is an open educational resource that enables artistic learners to peer-produce, codify and share their own learning practices. OER practises a range of open and peer-based theories of learning and knowledge production to extend open access beyond the communal Third Places (Oldenburg 1999) frequently produced by artists. In particular, it experiments with ‘paragogics’, learning principles that offer a flexible framework for peer learning adaptable to any given context.
