Public School Helsinki

Description

Katharina Moebus:

“At the Public School Helsinki, 11 the basic idea was about generating temporary spaces for knowledge exchange. There was never a fixed location (though this differs from city to city), and locations depended on the class taking place. Governance was rotated amongst an organising committee which could moderate and schedule class proposals. What was particularly interesting was that it was not necessary to be a knowledgable teacher in order to propose a class – people could also suggest something they’d like to learn and look in the community for a teacher, and if none was found, try to teach it to each other through online tutorials and other sources. This was empowering in such a sense that the genuine need for a specific kind of knowledge could be satisfied on a mutual and horizontal basis, where everyone was teacher and learner at the same time. In 2010, I used the platform to organise a cob oven building class on a construction site in Helsinki open for temporary use, where none of the participants – including myself – had any experience in using this technique. We researched collectively where to get instructions (from an online tutorial) and the necessary materials (from construction sites and nature) and managed to build a functioning urban cob oven for free and open use by Helsinki citizens (Moebus 2012, 2015).” (http://economiesofcommoning.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Katharina-Moebus_Economies-of-commoning-citizen-participation_IASC-2017.pdf)