Learning is often progress-oriented, institutionally driven, and focused on the accumulation of knowledge, skills and behaviour. In contrast, unlearning is directed towards embodied forms of knowledge and the (un)-conscious operation of ways of thinking and doing. Unlearning denotes an active critical investigation of normative structures and practices in order to become aware and get rid of taken-for-granted "truths" of theory and practice. This book shares the process of unlearning, taking art and art institutions as sites for unlearning and Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons as an experimental case.0Unlearning at an art organization has led to collective unlearning exercises that express the conditions, modalities, and implications of a particular group of art workers. The business of running an art institution is irrevocably tied up with the anxiety and stress of constantly "being busy" making things visible in competitive and hierarchical conditions. This busyness causes the habitual undervaluing of what often remains invisible?so-called reproductive works such as cleaning, fixing, and caring. Unlearning processes make way for social transformations that lead towards the culture of equality and difference which we call the culture of the commons.

Art as Unlearning makes an argument for art's unlearning as a manneristpedagogy. Art's pedagogy facilitates a form of forgetfulness by extending what happens in the practice of the arts in their visual, auditory and performative forms. The concept of learning has become predominantly hijacked by foundational paradigms such as developmental narratives whose positivistic approach has limited the field of education to a narrow practice within the social sciences. This book moves away from these strictures by showing how the arts confirm that unlearning is not contingent on learning, but rather anticipates and avoids it. This book cites the experience and work of artists who, by unlearning the canon, have opened a diversity of possibilities by which we make and live the world. Moving beyond clichés of art's teachability and what we have to learn through the arts, it advances a scenario where unlearning is uniquely presented to us by the diverse practices that we identify with the arts. The very notion of art as unlearning stems from and represents a fundamental critique of the constructivist pedagogies that have dominated arts education for over half a century. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education, philosophy of education, history of education, pedagogy of art and art education. It will also appeal to educators, art educators, and artists interested in the pedagogy of art.

Art as Unlearning makes an argument for art’s unlearning as a manneristpedagogy. Art’s pedagogy facilitates a form of forgetfulness by extending what happens in the practice of the arts in their visual, auditory and performative forms. The concept of learning has become predominantly hijacked by foundational paradigms such as developmental narratives whose positivistic approach has limited the field of education to a narrow practice within the social sciences. This book moves away from these strictures by showing how the arts confirm that unlearning is not contingent on learning, but rather anticipates and avoids it. This book cites the experience and work of artists who, by unlearning the canon, have opened a diversity of possibilities by which we make and live the world. Moving beyond clichés of art’s teachability and what we have to learn through the arts, it advances a scenario where unlearning is uniquely presented to us by the diverse practices that we identify with the arts. The very notion of art as unlearning stems from and represents a fundamental critique of the constructivist pedagogies that have dominated arts education for over half a century. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education, philosophy of education, history of education, pedagogy of art and art education. It will also appeal to educators, art educators, and artists interested in the pedagogy of art.

Maya Angelou once said, "Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women." In this collective piece of work, nine gifted women experts come together to do just that and share their individual stories of overcoming adversity in all its various forms. Each woman, although unique in her own identity and personal experience, shares a common bond with each of the other women in her desire to have a positive, meaningful, and lasting impact in the lives of those she reaches.

In this insightful look at the human side of school reform, Robert Evans examines the difficult hurdles to implementing innovation and explains how the best-intAnded efforts can be stalled by the resistance of educators who too often feel burdened and conflicted by the change process.The Human Side of School Change provides practical advice on problem solving, communication, and staff motivation. It argues for more realistic expectations about the pace of reform and the performance of leaders. And it presents a way of approaching all school improvement—a conceptual framework for understanding change as a process, educators as people, and leadership as a craft. By concentrating on the realities of life in schools and the common personal barriers to change, Evans illuminates the key sources of resistance to school reform. Grounding his work in a thorough understanding of human behavior and organizational functioning, he provides a new model of leadership along with practical management strategies for building a framework of cooperation, not conflict, between the leaders of change and the people they depAnd upon to implement it.

Unlearning to Draw looks to the art of children and outsider artists for inspiration, advocating a return to carefree, untrained drawing and a renewed focus on the joys of making rather than on the end result. Author Peter Jenny encourages readers to use family photographs as the starting point to develop their own types of outsider art.

A Time “Must-Read” Book of 2019 “[Williams] is so honest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles, that it is hard not to admire him.” —Andrew Solomon, New York Times Book Review (front page) The son of a “black” father and a “white” mother, Thomas Chatterton Williams found himself questioning long-held convictions about race upon the birth of his blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter—and came to realize that these categories cannot adequately capture either of them, or anyone else. In telling the story of his family’s multigenerational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white, he reckons with the way we choose to see and define ourselves. Self-Portrait in Black and White is a beautifully written, urgent work for our time.

A passionately urgent call for all of us to unlearn imperialism and repair the violent world we share, from one of our most compelling political theorists In this theoretical tour-de-force, renowned scholar Ariella Aïsha Azoulay calls on us to recognize the imperial foundations of knowledge and to refuse its strictures and its many violences. Azoulay argues that the institutions that make our world, from archives and museums to ideas of sovereignty and human rights to history itself, are all dependent on imperial modes of thinking. Imperialism has segmented populations into differentially governed groups, continually emphasized the possibility of progress while it tries to destroy what came before, and voraciously seeks out the new by sealing the past away in dusty archival boxes and the glass vitrines of museums. By practicing what she calls potential history, Azoulay argues that we can still refuse the original imperial violence that shattered communities, lives, and worlds, from native peoples in the Americas at the moment of conquest to the Congo ruled by Belgium's brutal King Léopold II, from dispossessed Palestinians in 1948 to displaced refugees in our own day. In Potential History, Azoulay travels alongside historical companions—an old Palestinian man who refused to leave his village in 1948, an anonymous woman in war-ravaged Berlin, looted objects and documents torn from their worlds and now housed in archives and museums—to chart the ways imperialism has sought to order time, space, and politics. Rather than looking for a new future, Azoulay calls upon us to rewind history and unlearn our imperial rights, to continue to refuse imperial violence by making present what was invented as “past” and making the repair of torn worlds the substance of politics.

successful life is not built on your ability to add, but on your ability to remove.After spending years judging my success (and others') on the volume of shiny objects I had, I realised that attaching happiness to material things - or even to a specific outcome, in fact - is a recipe for disaster. Obsessively chasing that next promotion or collecting designer watches might seem like the mark of a winner, but if you need to have something in your life in order for you to be happy - if you are attaching your happiness to external factors - you will always be searching for that next hit of dopamine. It's like an addiction: you're always chasing that first-ever feeling of euphoria, and the satisfaction you derive becomes less and less every time. It wasn't until I lost what I thought was everything - until my career and my material possessions were stripped away - that I claimed back my true values and gained clarity, perspective and gratitude for all that I had. I was forced into a position that made me see the world through a different set of eyes and appreciate the small pleasures in life. As a result of my own experience, I now see that it's the simplicity and fundamentals of life that hold true beauty. You don't need more, you need less. I'm not just talking in terms of material possessions. In today's world most of us are searching for a new tool, a new skill, more information, more knowledge - but everything we need is already inside of us. Under all the layers of fear and self-doubt, our true potential is already there, waiting for us to uncover it. It's not until we remove what's not serving us that we can see clearly what truly matters.As I set out on my own journey, I soon came to realise that the best things in life aren't things at all. They are people. They are experiences. It's time to unlearn everything that is false and unhelpful and make way for the real you to shine