Cēsis Pluriversity is an education research and design project that operates as a school without an address, and is aimed at turning a whole medieval town of Cēsis into the 21st century urban campus and learning environment by rearticulating given urban metabolsim and exploring how knowledge can circulate in already established spatial structures. In doing so it brings together geography, design and philosophy in order to explore new materialism based relational education methods and practces.
National
Latvia
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It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Jānis Last name: Ķīnasts Gender: Male Nationality: Latvia Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Akmens Iela 1-28 Town: Cēsis Postal code: LV-4101 Country: Latvia Direct Tel:+371 26 778 692 E-mail:kinastsjanis@gmail.com Website:https://www.pluriversity.eu/
Cēsis Pluriversity is an informal school without an address. It operates during all year with a central event of summer school where and when the next year's curricullum is collectively shaped. It is a long term experimental and informal education research & design project - liminal learning landscape where the whole city becomes school and education is poetically experienced without borders. It is an educational-activities-based initiative exploring approaches to relational education and independent studies that strengthen the communities. Instead of erecting a new building and spatially institutionalized school building in Cēsis, it seeks to create such an urban campus (learning conditions and communitas of scholars) that would transform the whole of Cēsis into an alternative learning environment by repurposing, rearticulating and regerating existing paradigms and given spatial structures. It asks a simple question - is it possible to turn a whole city into a school without building new physical structures by doing the opposite - bringing together the existing spaces, transforming the given infrastructure and rearticulating the social and built legacy.
Cēsis Pluriversity socially brings together a glocally situated community of scholars, researchers and practitioners who imagine, map, explore, analyze, plan and design an integral and holistic curriculum of learning events that essentialy is aimed at a very ambitious goal - to give 800 year old city another 800 years. It seeks to redirect whole urban metabolism of a small medieval town by unlocking all the knowledge already coded into the urban landscape. As pandemic eroded schools and reduced learning to the bedrooms Cēsis Pluriversity does the opposite by dissolving the "school" and learning experience into the urban fabric that opens up new opportunities not only to learn from the new materialism perspective but also to regain the sense of belonging to the city as a lived experience and thinking place.
education
urban planning
design
geography
philosophy
Cēsis Pluriversity repurposes the already existing physical infrastructure and built environment of medieval town of Cēsis to imagine urban campus in becoming. As the informal learning years takes shape as summer schools, plainairs, hands on workshops in our garden classroom and lectures all around the city and also remotely, the project makes its place by always using already existing spaces (coworking centre, artist residency, public space, cafes, bars, galleries, parks etc), and by giving this new layer of educational dimension is actually materializing circular exchange of the knowledge.
Speaking from the sustainability perspective Cēsis Pluriversity seeks to push the educational paradigm first and foremost by focusing on exploring such questions as:
1.) climate crisis (including unprecedented epidemics relational to the anthropogenic load on natural ecosystems);
2.) subsequently emerging geopolitical tensions and socio-economic catastrophes;
3.) displacement, migration and refugee crisis of millions;
4.) unprecedented urbanization in the form of refugee camps, slums, megacities — all becoming the dominating urban environments;
technological hegemony;
5.) above all — the globally local impact on Latvia and each on of us.
Cēsis Pluriversity asks a simple question: “What futures are arriving to us and what do we need to learn to adapt (within) them?” Given the context of what is happening both in Europe and globally there are reasons to believe that given universities as institutions are experiencing crisis in every sense of the word. Cēsis Pluriversity is intended to sustainably de-re-construct (to unlearn in order to relearn) and transform the generally accepted higher education approaches.
As Cēsis Pluriversity is bringing relational education design to the specific and already existing context it has accumulated knowledge in a way that is methodogically applicable to any given environment where the praxiographical research is possible.
Cēsis Pluriversity works within beautiful medieval town with more than 800 years of history that is manifested in all the dimensions of place including rich layer of architecture and historical urban planning legacy. As the project aims to transform the whole town into 21st century learning environment where anything and anywhere can become a bodily engaging classroom it directly follows NEB compass in order to:
1) Reactivate the context - project sees the whole urban fabric of Cēsis as an environment filled with knowledge. By working within the faculty of "design" the project generates and offers the municipality and the locals visions and ideas how to see the city otherwise for example by dedicating some architectural research on how some brownfield and used to be industrial areas could be regenerated as creative quarters and possible locations for other schools which need determined addresses;
2) Connect sense of belonging - as another Cēsis Pluriversity faculty is "geography" the project maps the ecological and cultural landscape in order to see the educational potential of given green and blue structures namely the historic public space and how it could be transformed in community driven and curated, flexible and mobile open air "classrooms";
3) Integrate local within the global and vice versa - Cēsis Pluriversity at its pedagogical core is a place based project that informed by global issues but translates them through local physical, social, economical and cultural landscape. Every aspect of the learning experience of project either it is a lecture or workshop or summer school is embodied within the local topos and its aesthetical qualities.
By offering to see the city as a school we invite people to see the it otherwise and in doing so by critial and speculative design the communities are offered opportunity to imagine park as a debate center, gardens as classrooms, streets as sports facilities and buildings as living material databases and arhives.
Cēsis Pluriversity is accessible for everyone who is willing to expand their worldview through academic lenses consisting of three faculties: geography, design, philosophy and overarching place based thematic ethos that is percieved through such concepts and hands on practice based research methods as urban metabolism, praxiography, placemaking, new materialism and relational education. Having said that project has no participation fee and all the events are free except the summer school when the entry fee covers accommodation and meals. Project is fundamentally non profit and aimed at development of such circular sharing of resources that go beyond money as the only value. At its operational model core it is participatory collaborative and voluntary - everyone can come and go whenever one feels like and the only obligation is to be honest with oneself, especially with responsibilities and level of involvement each and everyone can individually carry.
Project is completely open for all the social classes, religions, level of income, experience and or formal training, education and above all else the place of origin.
Cēsis Pluriversity is fundamentally connected, embedded and dedicated to the future of Cēsis town. Its political ambition besides the educational goals is to bring back young people and bring in new people to otherwise slowly dying historical and regional city that is located in the middle of national park. That story is known too well across the whole Europe. So in order to fulfill this aspect of being academically informed project i.e. school, Cēsis Pluriversity is organizing all of its events in already established spaces and venues therefore literally bringing in value, attendance and also money into the local private and public businesses.
By adding the non profit and free to acccess dimension of the project it opens up learning possibilities for those the most vulnerable in relation to future prospects - young people who would otherwise drop beside the dreams of studying somewhere else because it is just too expensive to leave the town, that is most commonly resulting in the loop of becoming labour force for local low tech agriculture and/or industrial sectors.
Cēsis Pluriversity impacts the local communities by materializing the most abstract yet practical aspect of education and learning - impossible becomes possible when seen as opportunity to imagine what does it take to be otherwise. In this sense Cēsis Pluriversity goes beyond even the idea of being school and becoming genius loci and futuring sense of the place.
Cēsis Pluriversity active members and learning community spans accross three continents including academically recognised scholars, hands on practitioners, formal students, activists, entrepeneurs and even dropouts. By public and open calls the project has established an international audience, global community, national recognition, regional impact and local team that works horizontally and democratically.
The project is active throughout the whole year with particular emphasis on each and unique of the nordic four seasons:
1) End of the summer - summer school where and when stakeholders from all the levels are invited to gather in Cēsis in order to plan and design the next year's curriculum;
2) Early autumn - analysis and synthesis of the summer school results in order to define framed and academically structured plan for the next learning year;
3) Late autumn - participation in local and regional conferences in order to communicate and promote the findings and explorative questions of the summer school;
4) Early winter - internal workshops to discuss, reframe and specify the goals for the next year and how the allign with project's mission;
5) Late winter - winter plainair that is annually dedicated to internal landscape mapping when rotating leadership team of management is formed;
6) Early spring - application for external funding, sponsorships and other open calls and contests;
7) Late spring - the start of gardening season in our permaculture garden;
8) Early summer - short break and preperation for conversation festival LAMPA.
All the meetings and community involvement events are organized as needed - physically, remotely and in times in a hybrid manner.
Cēsis Pluviersity brings together in one educational research project and within multidisciplinary learning environment: geography, design, philosophy, environmental anthropology, landscape ecology, multispecies relationships, urban metabolism analysis, praxiography, placemaking, new materialism and relational education.
Interaction of such distinctive and yet connected disciplinces is always messy, very rich, dense with discussions and creatively-unexpected outcomes. As the project brings together representatives from diverse academic backgrounds and overall life experiences it has generated vast amount of research material especially about voluntary leadership, community building, formal and informal process management and above all else - multicultural responses.
All of it is directely and purposefully integrated in the iterative approach of trial and error process of project implementation and has lead to four main mid-first-phase conlusions:
1) To have an audience is not to have a community;
2) To maintain community beyond formal obligations is a matter of trust, care and clear vision of values;
3) To have an effective team within the community takes courage to defend values and ethos more than individual expectations;
4) School without an address is possible.
Cēsis Pluriversity innovative character can be defined by:
1) Bringing togther disciplines outside and beyond the established academic traditions;
2) School without an address is absolutely rational and pragmatic project given the lessons and experience from the pandemic;
3) City as a school that is established by rearticulation of urban metabolism rather than real estate and construction drive project intelligence is redirective practice in action.
The element of bringing design to the specific geography by esablishing structural yet flexible philosophical ethos (therefore by learning from the problem instead of appropriating it to dogmatic solutionism) is adaptive, replicable and uniquely transformable method.
Cēsis Pluriversity materializes itself as regular on-site and online learning events with the annual central activity — a summer school during which a plan for the next year curriculum is mapped. From this outlook, it is an iterative process that, in addition studies the public open space and maps those sites of Cēsis where, the creation of outdoor “classes” in the form of learning – community gardens would be possible.
Cēsis Pluriversity are transforming the whole city into the 21st century learning conditions we call Pluriversity. We are not building walls to create classrooms, as classrooms now can be anything and anywhere. The real University has no place - except in our minds. We redirectively, by analyzing approaching futures, design new patterns, mindsets, paradigms and relationships that create urban (environmental and landscape) conditions of and for learning.
We envision Pluriversity as relationally complex web of relationships of already existing formal education spaces, creative and artistic plainairs, education research conferences, philosophical symposiums, gardens as classrooms and summer schools with the transformative potential to turn public space into a new kind of interconnected learning environment — we build without using bricks, we design in time and integrate.
Pluriversity as an environmental project brings together diverse epistemologies, practices and adaptive methodologies to already loaded futures that are slowly arriving.
Through transforming a whole city in Pluriversity we envision education that is reconnected with the humanistic project of communitas — a society that is constantly learning.
Last but not the least by transitioning the whole urban metabolism into conditions of Pluriversity we recenter education around its core task — to help us in becoming more caring species. As Plato founded his academy, we are building our pluriversity.
Climate crisis - empower local community and equip it with intellectually diverse thinking systems;
Global food insecurity - address the loss of manual skills by turning community gardens into outdoor classrooms;
Market driven and serving education - in socially engaging manner bring together different disciplines in order to open up new possibilities and forms of educational imagination;
Pandemic induced erosion of schools as physically located institutions - turn the given urban settlements into open air and functionally connected learning environments.
Do it all by digging where you stand, meaning bring the global and translate it within the local - empower and strengthen local community, attract international thought leaders by providing something more than financial value and look under the radar especially within regional and rural contexts. There are reasons why some locals are still there - start with them, map their values and analyse history - environment holds more than sum of parts.
Cēsis Pluriversity is failing more than succeeding but it is at leat trying to generate hope where it is seemingly lost.
Cēsis Pluriversity time frame is 30 years, divided into four phases:
1) Imagination (2020 - 2027);
2) Cultivation (2028 - 2035);
3) Construction (2035 - 2042);
4) Dwelling (2043 - 2050).
Since the 2020 Cēsis Pluriversity has curated and organized more than 20 public lectures not to mention learning events and experiences such as design workshops for the Cēsis Pluriversity community that already involves more than 30 active participants from USA, Europe, the UK and Australia. There also have been three summer schools and two winter plainairs; not to mention cultivation of already established community permaculture garden that is also an outdoor classroom "Jume". Cēsis Pluriversity is also a partner and organizer of its own stage in the largest democracy festival in the Baltics - LAMPA where we curate and moderate a two day educational conversation program called "End of the World" that is dedicated to democratic conversations about harsh and politically challenging topics.
Cēsis Pluriversity is the oficial member of NEB Lab: places for learning network and with it's smaller scale initiative "garden classroom Jume" also a NEB prize finalist of 2022. The project is in operation since 2020 when it was launched with series of open and free to all lectures about the related topics. All of the lectures are available on Cēsis Pluriversity youtube channel and the website www.pluriversity.eu.
Cēsis Pluriversity has also served as participant in many high level round table discussions about future of higher education in Latvia with honourable mention of project being invited by national UNESCO office to take place in the panel with all the largest universities in Latvia.
Cēsis Pluriversity by organizing informal yet deeply curated learning events equip learners and educators with the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for a greener and more sustainable economy and society. It supports and consults other education and training institutions to integrate sustainability into teaching and learning and across all aspects of their operations. It already has created a shared understanding on the deep and transformative changes needed in education and training for sustainability and the green transition.
