PEDAGOGICAL FACTORY: EXPLORING STRATEGIES FOR AN EDUCATED CITY HYDE PARK ART CENTER
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I must admit I had high expectations when I first visited “Pedagogical Factory” in early August, and was somewhat taken aback when I saw how much the space resembled a surreal exaggeration of a typical school. A giant chalkboard 15 or 20 feet tall listed upcoming events–a bit like the authoritarian instructions of a giant absent teacher, it evoked the power dynamics that make school unpleasant for many students. A number of publications, DIY in form and content, occupied racks in a spacious but spartan area of reading tables constructed by Material Exchange from salvaged materials. A little trailer in the corner housed a low-power radio station, SPOKE, used primarily to play recordings of teenagers from the Austin neighborhood participating in the Stockyard Institute’s educational radio project. The drab appearance suggested FEMA refugees or a claustrophobic time-out space. Haphazard postings on the wall included some sloppy coloring-book-style contributions to Area magazine’s People’s Atlas project, in which participants invent their own maps, and informative posters from the Celebrate People’s History project. In the audiovisual area was a project of the Experimental Sound Studio: the Found Chicago Sounds listening station, which featured an annotated listing of ambient sounds recorded around Chicago. (WBEZ has also been broadcasting these pedestrian soundscapes.) The space didn’t look much like a gallery. It seemed, well, educational.
Saint Claire’s organization, the University of Hip-Hop, was founded by gifted Chicago artist and schoolteacher Lavie Raven, who was also in attendance. Raven was interviewed in William Upski Wimsatt’s 1994 book of essays, Bomb the Suburbs. In the tradition of progressive education exemplified by John Dewey and Paulo Freire, Raven argued that an educator should be “a student, a learner, rather than an overrated teacher.” One way to blur the line between traditional education and the outside world is to make a gallery look like a classroom. But you can also transform traditional educational spaces with the energy and freedom of people working in the outside world–dancing, farming.
