Education from Below is a two-year collaborative programme organised between the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, MACBA, Barcelona and WHW, Zagreb.
Education from Below explores art as a place for dialogue, collective learning and imagination. Education doesn't belong only in institutions, but it can be horizontal and come from below, from communities.
The project recognises that art practices can dislocate the usual hierarchies of what should or should not be learned and traditional divisions between theory and practice, and that knowledge does not have to be based on accumulation, but rather on sharing and mutual learning.
The partners will explore new models of art practice based on collective learning and will generate a network of institutions and professionals for sharing methodologies.
Education from Below links three independent programmes for artists, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, PEI at MACBA, and WHW Akademija that each provide important opportunities for artistic development outside of formal education systems. The project will be realised over the course of autumn 2019 – autumn 2021 through seminars, study groups, artist residencies, exhibitions, series of lectures, an international conference, a collective reader and a common web platform, involving many artists, thinkers and educators.
A discussion around the project A quatre potes, by nyamnyam and Pedro Pineda, about forest management, design as an investigative tool and the limits of the museum.
With the participation of Lídia Guitart (forest engineer), Curro Claret (industrial designer), Ingrid Guardiola (writer, cultural researcher and Director of Bòlit, Centre d'Art Contemporani), the artists, exhibition curators and workshop participants.
nyamnyam is an arts collective and collaborative force that focuses on ways of working above and beyond making works by creating context and process before—or instead of—production or presentation. Drawing on its founders’ backgrounds in music, dance and theatre (Ariadna Rodríguez) and filmmaking and visual arts (Iñaki Álvarez), nyamnyam launched a series of events in Barcelona for artists to share their practice, as well as running workshops on food sovereignty. nyamnyam has since fermented into a free-ranging interdisciplinary practice and para-institution that is active across the visual arts, social design, community advocacy, curating, experimental education, live art and hosting. Since 2019 it has had its own base at Mas nyamnyam, in the village of Mieres, in the province of Girona. Developed with designer Pedro Pineda, A quatre potes (2014–ongoing) starts with the principle that in order to share a meal or have a discussion you first have to build a table to sit at. It then turns to co-design and collective furniture making for solutions, an experience which in turn creates its own scenography for participatory knowledge and learning about the dynamics of local materials, the commons and access to tools.