Samoa House Library is excited to present *curriculum* 2020.

​

We are developing *curriculum* 2020 from SHL’s foundational *curriculum* programme held in 2019, with a focus on providing a horizontal structure within which diverse practitioners can share knowledge and resources on a peer-to-peer basis.​

​

*curriculum* 2020 will take place at Samoa House Library over the next ten months. Each month an invited practitioner, or practitioners, will choose a text that has been pivotal to their thinking or way of working. This text provides a ground for their 3 week long programme. Each practitioner's programme will begin from their shared text, involve 2 to 3 reading groups, a workshop, and end with a discussion. 

​

Reading groups will be facilitated by Samoa House Library and take place on a Wednesday evening. These sessions allow participants to read alongside one another and collectively encounter the practitioner's chosen text. We often read out loud, ask and answer questions, and begin to critically analyse the text together.

​

A weekend workshop and discussion will be led by each practitioner. Practitioners are not expected to take a traditional teaching role, but are encouraged to act as knowledgeable contributors to an open discussion or activity, and may guide conversation and provide expertise as necessary. 

​

The entire programme of *curriculum* is free and open to all. We encourage participants to engage on their own terms. The programme’s open and nonlinear structure allows participants to attend as many or as few sessions as they want. Within this programme, the relationship between teacher and learner, speaker and listener will be actively interrogated and tested. While each session will be guided by our invited practitioners, the voices of all participants are equally weighted. 

 

   _____________________

​

Alternative education models often emerge in response to the insufficiencies of established institutions. While less secure, they benefit in many ways from their relative independence and freedom to address these insufficiencies. *curriculum*’s less outcome-oriented approach allows for more emergent qualities and forms of thinking to develop — those less likely to be accounted for in more conventional settings. *curriculum*’s discursive, conversationally-driven model aims to be both generative and generous. It is a more openly vulnerable process that embraces contingency and uncertainty. This type of conversational research is formed around convivial relations and kinship—it requires, and benefits from, ongoing collective negotiation and discovery. 

​

   _____________________

​

 

You can see an archive of last year's practitioners and selected texts on our website here.

 

*curriculum* has been made possible by support from Creative New Zealand.