School of Critical Engagement

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Visit us at http://schoolofcriticalengagement.org/about.html
https://vimeo.com/soceproductions Place is critical and needs to be critically engaged.

The School of Critical Engagement is operating with / within all the processes, participants, protagonists, systems, and stakeholders, that make / construct place. Place develops through interactions between human and non-human systems, nature and culture, people and space, individuals and collectives, and hegemonial and marginalized cultures and identities. Place is more than the ground on which

change occurs, place is an active agent. Place is ground zero for where "s**t happens" or "s**t takes place." Finding new, constructive, and meaningful ways to participate in place is not an option but critical to address questions of social and environmental justice, critical to thriving and not merely surviving. The fields, disciplines, practices, and professions that are traditionally involved in understanding and changing place have fundamentally failed; it is evident in post-Katrina New Orleans, the long economic decline of Detroit and the favelas in Brazil. It is not just practices that have failed the educational approaches based on traditional disciplinary concepts of practice are trying to make reality fit their expectations, depriving students of the opportunity to learn and participate in new languages, new practices, and new forms of interactions. The School of Critical Engagement is:
-Fundamentally place and project based, it emphasizes: context over concept, experiences over expectations, participants over detachment, reflectiveness over preconception, and process over product.

-Fundamentally interdisciplinary: it strives to develop new languages, new practices, new ideas, new pedegogies beyond the traditional boundaries of disciplines, and practices concerned with place, people and culture. It involves bodies of knowledge, approaches, practices, and frameworks from fields that have traditionally been excluded,

-Fundamentally inclusive: it will involve people with backgrounds traditionally excluded from access to academia and higher education,

-Fundamentally discursive: based in discovery, critically, responsiveness, creativity, and reflectiveness.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney on Confederate Monuments, Pseudo-History, and Racial Reconciliation

08/26/2020

https://commonedge.org/mayor-levar-stoney-of-richmond-on-confederate-monuments-pseudo-history-and-racial-conciliation/

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney on Confederate Monuments, Pseudo-History, and Racial Reconciliation A talk with the mayor about his decision to remove the statues, and what comes next.

08/22/2020

https://commonedge.org/the-chernobyl-paradox-the-intense-connection-between-health-and-living-structure/

The Chernobyl Paradox: The Intense Connection Between Health and Living Structure A remarkable film, The Babushkas of Chernobyl, raises important questions about health and the power of place.

08/22/2020

https://commonedge.org/whack-a-mole-urban-planning-in-los-angeles-is-not-working/

Whack-a-Mole Urban Planning in Los Angeles Is Not Working Solving one problem adds troubles somewhere else. The region needs to think holistically.

08/21/2020

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/08/20/steve-bannon-is-arrested-for-fraud

Steve Bannon is arrested for fraud Yet another of Donald Trump’s former aides is in trouble

How Maya Pillai became a rising GOP star — and one of Davidson’s most notorious students

08/20/2020

https://amp-charlotteobserver-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article244739982.html

How Maya Pillai became a rising GOP star — and one of Davidson’s most notorious students Students were given the option to attend in-person or virtually this fall. She chose to attend virtually. “Not entirely because of the COVID-19 outbreak,” she says, “but because I am afraid of being targeted.”

Was the U.S. Government Found Guilty of Assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr.?

08/20/2020

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-mlk-assassination/?fbclid=IwAR032TpZCoju3MfB2UIjSOBAs7_gKyBaLoqMye3GsX0Cq4TTHRhUAxUMlZE

Was the U.S. Government Found Guilty of Assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr.? Conspiracy meme claims the United States government was sued and found culpable for the murder Martin Luther King, Jr., but the news media refused to report it.

When I see the future, I close my eyes - The Mosaic Rooms

08/12/2020

Yahoo, Heba!

When I see the future, I close my eyes - The Mosaic Rooms The Mosaic Rooms announces the first UK solo exhibition of artist Heba Y. Amin. Amin investigates how the elusive narratives

Will Cars Rule the Roads in Post-Pandemic New York?

08/11/2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/nyregion/nyc-streets-parking-dining-busways.html

Will Cars Rule the Roads in Post-Pandemic New York? Newly emboldened, many New Yorkers want to repurpose streets for walking, biking, dining and schools, even as traffic returns.