In February 2022 a joint article ‘Hacking education: Arte Útil as an educational methodology to foster change in curriculum planning’, written between myself and my long term colleague and collaborator Alessandra Saviotti. At the time of writing, I was also acting as Lead Supervisor for Alessandra’s PhD by Practice. The article was published online as part of the ‘Art & the Public Sphere’ Journal (Volume 11 Number 1). There is a pdf version of this article on the Writing Tab of this website).

ABSTRACT

Artworks operating at the intersection of art and education often attempt to chal-lenge dominant education systems in suggesting alternative pedagogical models that could function outside the official academic realm, proposing radical changes to the latter. However, the lack of continuity of alternative education models imple-mented by artists and curators within universities’ art and design departments fails to provide a longer-term change. This article stems from our research on the usological turn, a recent shift from spectatorship to usership according to which artists and curators tend to create art projects which situate themselves as part of a broader usership. Using an autoethnographic approach, we will analyse how the principles of the art group Arte Útil intersects with the undercommons. Hence, we explore how they apply an alternative method, through participatory curriculum planning, as a tool for change within the institution of education.