About

Popular Education Gathering-  Friday evening18th til Sunday 20th January
2008, Hebden Bridge

In the last few years we (trapese) have been using techniques and been
inspired by
popular education. We see it as a great way of
groups informing themselves about issues with a clear focus on how we can
take action together. From the G8, to
climate change, migration borders and racism,radical women’s gatherings,
to setting up a community gardens, herbal medicine courses and training
for other budding popular educators we have found a really positive
response to the methods used. We also wanted to learn new skills and talk
about how we can expand radical education networks in UK and beyond.

We brought together other people working with popular
education methods for a weekend of talks, walks and siting round the fire.
The idea of the weekend was to reflect, skill share, strategise and
network ways of expanding what  we are doing and how we could do it
better.

These were the four main themes of the weekend, we did an open space
agenda, inviting people to propose topics under the topics
Skill Sharing
Strategising
Networking and moving forward

We didn’t want to host a massive gathering or try to introduce
these ideas to those totally new to them but instead get about 30 people
together to have a really productive weekend.

The venue will be Height Gate farm,
http://www.woodcraft.org.uk/centres/heightgate/
It’s near the village of Todmorden in West Yorkshire and can be reached in
about 4 hours from London. It’s a very nice camping barn in the Pennines
and has simple accommodation and wood burning stoves.

before: we asked these questions some we answered some we didnt
While we want to make room to explore many different ideas relating to
popular education during the weekend, we are sending some ideas of the the
key directions and strategic questions that we as Trapese would like us to
discuss. They can be a guide to stimulate our thinking in the lead up to
the weekend: Please feel free to send other questions you may have or
suggestions for articles/ reading. Perhaps on to the
http://trapese.wordpress.com/ may be a good place or you can reply to all
participants via this email.

1. What is the role of popular education in extending anti-capitalist
ideas and action?

2. How can we make our pop ed work radical, accessible and relevant?

3. How feasible/desirable/necessary is a UK wide network of popular
educators dedicated to
radical, mass outreach? What would it look like and how could we get there?

4. How can we organise broadly, capture people’s imaginations and not
repeat the mistakes and organisational dead-ends of traditional left
groups?

5. Can we start pilot case study consultations in localities to develop
radical, participatory politics? How would this be done?

6. To what extent can popular educators act as a bridge between social
movement/ “activist” thought and action and the discussions and concerns
of wider communities? How can this be achieved?