Deschooling Through Liveness

How does the project address the Liveness Charter aims?

Co-production

The research project adopted three collaborative positions in varying degrees of seperation between the university and the city:

The first reflected on my position as a learner in the university participating in the institutional liveness of SSoA Live Projects, developing a critical understanding and challenging assumptions around live learning in Schools of Architecture.

The second took an embedded position within Live Works, as a member of the team

participating in collaborative practice as an agent of civic (un)learning. It explored the practices employed by Live Works to create and sustain mutual and caring relationships with community partners.

Finally, I situated myself within a community of learners, working with Sheffield City Council, local businesses, social enterprises and residents to produce and deliver a co-produced strategy for a large urban site. Developing the role of agent of civic (un)Learning, the research disrupted council and university engagement processes advocating for improved citizen agency. 

Equitable

Throughout the Castlegate case study, there was a constant need to reproduce the community of practice (The Castlegate Partnership) who were at risk of both being displaced from their business premises and/or marginalised within the urban development process. Through the provision of threshold space (the Live Works Urban Room) and the facilitation of workshops, the research took an active approach to bringing unheard voices to the table. Through the redirection of community and council resources ensured the communities contiued to feel their knowledge was valued. Finally produced advocacy documents ensuring the outputs from their participation were utilised within the urban development process.

The workshops also became a space for critical reflection within the community of practice. For example, rethinking what forms of heritage should be valued in Castlegate, moving from discourses of power and dominance associated with a castle to everyday voices and stories of ordinary people.

Experimental

The research proposed the role of the “Agent of Civic (Un)Learning” as a novel approach to architectural practice and education. As an intervention into Live Projects, I developed the role of the Live Project Chronicler, training students in methods of storying to produce alternative outputs. 

Taking my own chronicling position during the co-production process over 8 years in Castlegate outlines a unique approaches and roles within engaged practice:

• The Situator Role acts as advocate for alternative forms of knowledge, utilising storying and performative methods.

• As Custodians – Agents take responsibility for the knowledge produced through collaborative activity as commons, to be used as a tool to strengthen the community of practice.

• As Connector - addressing the “crisis of care” left behind my austerity policy and performing reporductive labour to maintain communities of practice.

• As Provocateur - utilising the architectural skillset in the production of outputs which challenge norms.

Meaningful

The research follows my own process of “becoming” through engagement with liveness, through which I was I was first introduced to the Castlegate project. But while this was my first introduction to the project, my introduction to Castlegate had come much earlier. As an adolescent growing up in a small town 20 miles outside of the city, Sheffield had become a place in which to experiment with my identity as a citizen and my first understanding of becoming citizen in an urban environment. During my education, architectural or otherwise, the Live Project was the first time my lived experience connected with my learning. The beginning of a process of questioning the way that I had been educated prior and the beginning of feeling a sense of agency in the city in which I had grown up.