Summer School Program as a Context-Specific Response to Social Segregation
Schoolaboratory of the Future is a context-specific pedagogical experiment at the site of cultural marginality, economic dependence, and political oppression. By interpreting the notion of a common future–as a distinctly human capacity–this open-end collaborative endeavor in public space constitutes a new sense of belonging among marginalized children of the urban periphery in Belgrade, Serbia. Remaining in the making, our initiative is a persistent self-revealing path to who we are.
Local
Serbia
Self-provided suburban neighbourhood Ledine, New Belgrade Municipality, Belgrade;
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
Creative Europe
2021-2023 partners @ RE:PLAY redesigning playscapes with children of Western Balkans, Cultural Cooperation Projects in the Western Balkans
“Strengthening cultural cooperation with and competitiveness of cultural and creative industries in the Western Balkans” Call for Proposals EACEA 39/2019
Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union;
2021-2022 partners @ Schoolartcity - Erasmus+, strategic partnership (Key action 2) Call 2020 Round 1 KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices KA227 - Partnerships for Creativity;
2018 - 2019 associated partners within Urban Hub 2 Belgrade within Shared Cities: Creative Momentum
Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Skogled Association Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Predrag Last name of representative: Milic Gender: Male Nationality: Serbia Function: Legal Representative Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Deliblatska 17/2 Town: Belgrade Postal code: 11070 Country: Serbia Direct Tel:+381 60 6961229 E-mail:skogled@gmail.com Website:https://skograd.themeskingdom.site/
URL:https://www.instagram.com/sko__grad/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #skograd, #skogled, #skograd, #skogled, #skolaboratorija, #schoolaboratory, #šk, #playmatters, #skola, #freeplay, #CoopWesternB, #šk, #playmatters, #skola, #freeplay, #CoopWesternBalkans, #righttoplay, #CreativeEurope, #schoolplayscapes, #Ledine
URL:https://www.facebook.com/skograd/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #skograd, #skogled, #skograd, #skogled, #skolaboratorija, #schoolaboratory, #šk, #playmatters, #skola, #freeplay, #CoopWesternB, #šk, #playmatters, #skola, #freeplay, #CoopWesternBalkans, #righttoplay, #CreativeEurope, #schoolplayscapes, #Ledine
URL:https://mobile.twitter.com/skogled Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #skograd, #skogled, #skograd, #skogled, #skolaboratorija, #schoolaboratory, #šk, #Ledine
Schoolaboratory of the Future is a context-specific pedagogical experiment at the site of cultural marginality, economic dependence, and political oppression. Conceptualized over the past six years in response to the growing social disparity in the Balkan Region, this local initiative aims at rethinking the role of school and education in Belgrade, Serbia, and building up the agency needed for delivering more just, inclusive, and context-specific social change.
The process of new state formations in the Balkans over the past three decades constituted new exclusive identities along the lines of language, religion, and territory. These dynamics shape the everyday life experiences as oppressive for all those subjects who fall out of the newly established cultural norms of Balkan societies. In Serbia, the new White-Orthodox-Serbian-Family became a yardstick that separates children on ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’ from early childhood on. Social segregation linked to ethnic differentiation renders most vivid when looking at the school enrollment trends.
In one of the marginalised suburban neighbourhoods of Belgrade–neighbourhood Ledine– such a trend transformed the local primary school into an ethnically segregated one, enrolling only the most disadvantaged children whose families fall out of the new cultural identity. As the dominant society members chose schools of other more homogenous neighbourhoods for their children, and in spite of the close vicinity of their neighbours, children are deprived of the opportunity to meet with their culturally differentiated peers.
In response to this growing trend, the Schoolaboratory of the Future was conceived as an encounter opportunity for children of both formalised and marginalised societies. Through an extracurricular program of summer school, this initiative persistently evolves in an attempt to provide space for creative interpretations of who we are, thus, laying a foundation for learning how to live together in the Balkans.
Schoolaboratory
Future
Hope
Social Infrastructure
Playscape
Our initiative aims to instigate the process of making a long-term, structural change that goes from closed to open societies in the Balkans by addressing the root causes of social segregation. It does so by dealing with the structural nature of education and its connection to the process of state reproduction, and by understanding the causalities that emerge out of the new urban condition in the Balkans, characterised by the massive unplanned self-provision of housing, by lacking public provisions, and by decaying infrastructures.
Our initiative intervened in the everyday life experience of marginalised suburban children and it offered a rare opportunity for recognition of differences in Serbian society, and consequently, it informed a more structural response to the needs of children in both the state-based educational system and in the city itself.
By instituting a new extracurricular program of the summer school, Schoolaboratory of the Future is a unique vehicle for establishing strategic partnerships, engaging institutions, involving professionals, and generating investments in local issues, while empowering some of the most disadvantaged members of our society, thus contributing to the change of society as a whole. Its sustainability lies in its long-term persistence with the location where the issue is analysed, in strong trust-based relationships that emerge among the individuals and institutions who remain committed and empowered by the successes of their common attempts, and in the impactful translation of lessons learned.
However, the most worth mentioning objective of our initiative is in caring relationships and social childhood that manifests itself in the Ledine neighbourhood in Belgrade as a condition sine qua non of social change in the Balkans. This context-specific approach to social segregation through a long-term, educational experiment in public space at the site of marginality is what our initiative has to offer to our European community.
Schoolaboratory of the Future brings people in a circle. It emerges where they are and it occupies spaces they care about the most. It deals with the everyday life experiences of those involved by recognising them for who they are, and in what they hope to achieve. Schoolabotaory of the Future is performative, festive, and directed towards our common future. It rather asks than answers, it is sensitive rather than ignorant, it is open and it happens over and over again. It giggles and it relaxes. It is colorful, surprising, and it does not request.
Schoolaboratory of the Future reminds us of who we are and it helps us to remain in productive exchange with each other. It helps the children to build up positive memories in childhood in spite of the inherited social arrangement that renders them less important members of our society. It empowers everyone involved to care about each other and about the world around them. It is a tangible exercise of world-maintaining and building that leaves traces. It is a common world in the making and by contributing to it children inscribe themselves to that world and it becomes theirs. They become visible and they gain the confidence they need to strive in life.
This initiative is a stark example of how it is possible to hope again at the site of marginality, exclusion, and oppression. Its performative, playful, and festive character brings joy among the people, and it empowers them to remain open in life. By contributing to the common narrative that goes beyond singular identities we liberate ourselves and become something bigger and the power of this discovery is what Schoolaboratory of the Future celebrates and eagerly shares.
Schoolaboratory of the Future is characterised by radical openness. As it embodies itself in the only remaining public space of the Ledine neighbourhood–the primary school courtyard–it is exposed to everyone who comes. Designed to attract children and neighbours, our initiative occupies the time-space continuum of this place offering a chance for mediated interaction in times when it is most needed – during the summer school break. The activities are free of charge and carefully planned in partnership with the local primary school to cater to differentiated needs while prioritizing those of children.
Summer school format has been selected to provide meaningful social, cultural, and educational opportunities for fulfilled summer time to children who otherwise stay unattended during summer holidays. Over the past six years, the initiative has explored many different formats allowing varied participation of children, neighbours, professional communities, institutions, and decision-makers. It successfully established a new common identity that goes beyond ethnic differentiation and offers a positive narrative that encompasses us all by celebrating our uniqueness. The format is still open and it evolves every year in response to specific community needs and capacities.
The material results of our initiative are as well having radically open character, erected in the school courtyard to enhance the experience of the whole community. Designed and built by and for the community, this new social infrastructure strengthens children’s agency and sense of ownership and belonging in the community.
Schoolaboratory of the Future is a joint action at the margins of citizenship that opens up space for both formalised and marginalised societies to meet and learn about each other. It is a step beyond inclusion and a realm of common attempts of living together on the basis of difference.
The so far achieved results of our initiative have been in empowering the marginalised school community to collectively envision and intervene in their everyday life realities. They manifested this new world in the making by building up social infrastructure in the neighbourhood and by building confidence and self-respect among the children for whom the place of marginalisation and exclusion–the school courtyard–became their favorite place in the world!
Further, Schoolaboratory of the Future brought public attention to this issue, involved numerous institutions and professionals both locally and internationally, and enabled further research and investments in the area. This summer school program turned out to be a great vehicle for engaging institutions and civil society organisations while enhancing the life of the people and benefiting participants in different formats – from site visits to co-productive workshops, performative walks, round tables, debate programs, research and design projects, and celebrations. These local activities and attention of the professional community in an otherwise underinvested part of the city empowered the local population to take an active part in improving the neighbourhood themselves.
In more abstract terms, learning from the Schoolaboratory of the Future is a foundation for a new generation of engaged policy-making, a result that will have a much wider implication and benefit to the whole Balkan Region.
At the local level, the initiative holds a tight collaboration with the neighbourhood and the primary school "Vlada Obradović Kameni", which provides the initiative with the space, connection with the children, parents, and school staff, as well as full support in all the actions that enable the goals of the initiative. This collaboration helps to ensure that the initiative is responsive to the needs and concerns of the local community and that it is inclusive and equitable.
The initiative has a pivotal role in bringing local and national institutions around the same table to discuss issues of school segregation, roles of education, and effects of unplanned urbanisation while offering a tangible case study to local professionals to act. It involved numerous actors over the course of six years such as the National Educational Forum, the National Agency for Poverty Reduction and Social Inclusion, the Faculty of Philosophy, the local office of Goethe-Institute Belgrad, the International Week of Architecture Belgrade BINA, the Faculty of Architecture, Centre for Promotion of Science Serbia, Bitef Festival, Novi Sad Design Week, and numerous news channels. This is helping us to align with national priorities and strategies while contributing to broader efforts to improve the position of children and social cohesion in the country.
At the regional and European level, the initiative is a point of reference for many civil society organizations, institutions, and initiatives working on similar issues – Kreativni Krajobrazi [HR], Pazi Park [SI], Záhrada Cultural Center [SK], Society for Creativity in Education [CZ], ZK/U [DE], Qendra Marrëdhënie [AL], Gradionica [MN], ICLD [SE], IOPD [ES], 4Cities [BE], SKuOR [AT], among others. This is helping us to share resources, co-produce knowledge, learn about good practices, and build a stronger and more resilient network of organizations working towards more just, inclusive, and context-specific social change in Europe.
Schoolaboratory of the Future gathers professionals who gained their formal education in various fields, most notably in art, architecture, urban studies, philosophy, and pedagogy. The initiative establishes a mutual learning flow among traditionally separated disciplinary registers – those of spatial arts with those of social arts – and its approach could be characterized as post-disciplinary. The team shares some of the core human values such as compassion, solidarity, curiosity, persistence, humility, and dignity that enable us to productively combine our specific expertise in multiplying our goals. It is to these values that we commit ourselves and it is with these values that we contribute to the emergence of a more just, plural, and democratic urban society.
The added value of such an approach is in going beyond disciplinary registers, merging rather than distinguishing, and in recognising the ways in which everyone involved has the capacity to contribute. In such a myriad of singular illuminations of the topic under study, at the crossroad of theory and practice, we paint a much wider image together while providing a tangible ground for concrete action. Action that is informed by the ongoing research, by the inherited social constraints, and by collectively envisioned future that embodies itself through joint activities in public space.
The innovative character of our initiative lies in our deliberate persistence to analyse and act upon a specific issue of a specific territory over a long period of time. Such endurance requires commitment and innovation when it comes to financing as most of the mainstream actions are predominantly time-limited, not allowing open-ended actions directed at solving local issues. Schoolaboratory of the Future is impactfully addressing the specific needs of marginalised children by questioning the role of state-based singular identity educational agenda, the lacking public provision of space and programs in a self-provided suburban neighbourhood, and the socio-material obstacles that hinder prospects of this social group.
Our initiative goes beyond traditional approaches that focus on standardized curricula and universal solutions, which do not take into account the voices and the specific needs and challenges of marginalized communities. By inserting ourselves in the community and engaging marginalized subjects in the design and implementation phases, through open-ended co-production activities, our initiative unravels the otherwise overlooked capacities and social capital that exists among such communities, thus contributing to the conceptualisation of an alternative approach to community development at the margins of citizenship.
Schoolaboratory of the Future successfully combines the hands-on approaches to the hopes and dreams of those involved, playfully, with the context-informed research and design practices that sensitise new generation citizens while informing the new approaches to public space and policy making. These qualities of our initiative organically developed exactly in response to the long-term persistence with the location, the topic, and the community – a character we recognise as highly innovative.
Our initiative could be transferred to other contexts in numerous ways. The first and most relevant is on the level of values and design principles, by embracing the open-ended character, the long-term, and radically local perspective. By applying the post-disciplinary approach to socio-political problems recognising differentiated knowledge and capacities of all involved as relevant. By starting from the here and now in the places we know the best and by organically building up expertise around issues under study with local experts as parts of our teams. Second, our initiative provides critical insights about more careful and respectful responses to the idea of inclusion of and co-production with marginalised communities. An example of how to build up respectful local and regional partnerships allowing communities and societies to prosper. Third, on the level of applying the creative methods that we have developed over the past six years in working with children in public space. By organising big-scale surprise activities, context-specific translation exercises of merging dreams, memories, and wishes, embodying heroes of the past and future, co-producing unique playscapes and parades, making movies, dancing, acting, and performing in public. And finally, persisting with the issue under study by linking it to other global and societal issues. Establishing strategic partnerships and translating lessons learned into impactful policy and action proposals.
Rather than in its object form, the Schoolaboratory of the Future is to be seen in its action form. In the why, what, where, how, and with whom it contributes to the emergence of a more just, plural and democratic urban society.
Schoolaboratory of the Future could be characterised as post-disciplinary approach to social change. Its persistently evolving format emerges out of the productive exchange across numerous knowledge traditions, recognising non-formalised knowledge as its integral part. Our approach emerges from the field of critical urban theory and critical urban pedagogy, informed by the feminist and intersectional research and action methodologies and by the Southern ethic of enquiring in urban studies. We combine situated knowledge with the long-term perspective to both act upon and learn with our case study.
We employ varied methods in our work, however, the underlying aspects of our methodic portfolio are that our activities are taking place in the open public space, often repetitive, and our tools and equipment are mobile and designed to pop up in public space. The repetitive character of our activities aims at inscribing rituals of care, providing continuity in otherwise often disrupted lives of marginalised children. Our approach is playful, transgenerational, and inclusive, stimulating and promoting co-design and co-production with children. These activities enable children to develop different social, motoric, and emotional skills and make their own initiatives that we respectfully follow and support. And last not least, our approach is celebratory. Most of our activities are about celebrating the results of our co-production activities in public space. These activities are performative, embodied, and collective. Our methodic choices are carefully made to gather and involve people and manifest a world among us that is in constant making.
Schoolaboratory of the Future is a local response to the accelerated global trend of nation-bound singular identities, to the great environmental urgency to change our relationship with one another and with the world around us, and with the growing social disparities and patterns of uneven development that privilege the few against the many.
Responding to these global trends, the initiative builds upon the distinctly human capacity to envision our common future and act in sync to embody it. By unraveling processes of cultural marginalisation, economic dependence, and political oppression, our initiative in particular deals with childhood matters. With the objective to provide equal opportunities to marginalised suburban children, Schoolaboratory of the Future works persistently on preserving the only remaining public space in the area and altering the educational process in the neighbourhood. We work on the valorisation, preservation, and improvement of the natural environment of the school courtyard as an ultimate playground and a classroom where we can collectively learn how to care about our environment. We create opportunities for children to take part in societal matters as agents of change by creating site-specific cultural programs in this otherwise deprived part of the city.
And above all, the initiative tries to instigate and nurture a set of distinctly human values that are needed for an informed and responsible living in the condition of plurality, giving children the agency to grow into adults that are more careful and open to difference, seeing, hearing and letting difference be an enriching part of their life. We strongly believe that through embodying values of compassion, solidarity, curiosity, persistence, humility, and dignity, our initiative contributes to the creation and sensitisation of a new generation of responsible citizens who will have the agency and the knowledge to impactfully respond to the growing global challenges.
In just a bit over six years, our initiative grew from a self-organised neighbourhood action into a well-instituted extracurricular program of a summer school that will have its seventh issue this year. Being conceptualised as both a research method and a pedagogical tool, Schoolaboratory of the Future shed light on processes of marginalisation in our society and it amplified the voices of the underheard while providing a chance for social childhood to children of our neighbourhood.
Our approach and achievements inspired numerous local and international groups who appreciated our work and we have published and presented our results across the globe. Our work has been awarded at the 42nd Architecture Salon in Serbia with the Prize for Experiment and Research as a brave example of doing engaged research in the field of architecture and urban development. We have been recognised as experts in the field of child and youth inclusion and we contributed to many local and international programs – numerous symposiums, public debates and conferences. With the support of the International Centre for Local Democracy from Sweden, we have published a Policy Brief that deals with school closures in response to Covid-19 pandemic, bringing voices from the ground to decision-makers.
We are proud that a whole generation of students who followed Schoolaboratory of the Future from its beginnings in 2016 continued education, some of whom reached university and are a part of the organising team nowadays. We conclude this application with a statement made by an 11-year-old schoolgirl for the national TV live broadcast during the grand opening celebration of collectively designed and built social infrastructure in the school courtyard: "We all want to prove to the people that we have made something in our school and that we have made an effort about it. With this, we proved that if we all come together we can do all of this very fast. And we proved that our school is really good!"
Our initiative contributes to the European competence framework on sustainability by questioning the ways in which our pedagogical agendas of today and our urban environment will shape the political subjects of tomorrow.
First, we recognise that by intervening in the educational process at the margins of citizenship our initiative contributes greatly to providing all learners with opportunities to learn about the climate crisis and sustainability. Our summer school format and activities with marginalised children of preserving and improving the school courtyard as a natural environment offer children a chance to practically exercise principles of sustainability and learn how to care for their environment. Second, our persistence with this particular topic and the location over a long period of time enabled us to impactfully mobilise national and EU funds to invest in green and sustainable equipment, resources, and infrastructure. We have co-produced a new social infrastructure in the area that offers children and the community opportunity to be more in nature and triggered investments in school infrastructure as a part of the energy transition initiative. Our summer school is a vehicle for the ongoing partnership project RE:Play funded by the EU on redesigning playscapes with children in the Western Balkan where we work with and promote nature-based solutions. And third, our initiative very impactfully involves students and staff, local authorities, youth organisations, and the research and innovation community in learning for sustainability. We have successfully carried out six summer schools, numerous research projects, and neighbourhood actions, engaging a whole variety of actors to learn together and secure the sustainable development of our school and the neighbourhood.
Concluding, with our work we hope to inspire a new generation of radically local, long-term, and open-ended initiatives that will secure a shared and survivable future for us all.
