RE:PLACE

Staying with the trouble -  living, learning, and change-making in the climate crisis

A transdisciplinary honours lab about creating place and community based eco-social impact while transforming education.

Admission: BA2, BA3, Master’s and Pre-Master’s students, and ArtEZ students
Number of students: 15 to 25 students from all faculties
Time frame: 29 November 2021 – May 2022
Meetings: Bi-monthly student-led meetings on Mondays during the day. (If your schedules change in the second semester, we can set a new meeting-moment together).
Location: this honours lab has it's own meeting rooms in the old tax office near the Nijmegen train station (Stieltjesstraat 2, Nijmegen).
Study load: flexible, approximately 30 hours/month including meetings
Language: English
Main hosts: Jur Koksma, Rozi Toth, Thieme Stap, Rob Reuzel
RE:PLACE alumni hosts: Ilona Claassen, Rik Pulles
Study costs: None
Information session: 19 October - 17:00-18:00: @Old tax office: Stieltjesstraat 2, Nijmegen
Application deadline: 12 November, 2021
Additional information: RE:PLACE is a collaboration between Radboud and ArtEZ Honours labs. The Honours lab is part of the Future of Academia Research Project, all students will be given consent forms before joining the lab. See also this article. Students from all disciplines are welcome to partake in the RE:PLACE learning journey.

Lab Outline

RE:PLACE is an educational innovation that starts from the premise that we live in the Anthropocene, in a time of a climate crisis. One of the ways to form healthier relationships with our planet and ourselves is to care for the places we live in and their communities, both human and more than human.

RE:PLACE aims to help the transformation of academia into one that is more focused on connecting with and caring for the places of our learning. RE:PLACE also moves away from traditional ways of education by opening the way for students to direct their own learning.

“But what will I learn?”

Throughout the honours lab, you will have the opportunity to develop your agency and change-making skills by initiating and facilitating various local projects of your choosing.  You will build a learning environment that helps you become more active in the climate crisis. You will learn to: take ownership over your education, to co-create in transdisciplinary environments, to think with an eco-social mindset, to use Design Thinking, to build communities, and to dare to imagine new narratives of change making. All the while, your participation will contribute to an action research about the program.

Rough timeline:

RE:CONNECT | Community Building and the starting of a learning journey (November)

RE:PLACE will start with building our own community of learning and practice. We will take time to get to know each other; to find a common base for our learning adventure, and to explore our needs, values, and boundaries with regards to working together. We will do this through fun and formative activities. The sessions will take place at the Future of Academia lab, our base unit, which we can use and decorate as we please.

Building RE:PLACE with the help of Futuring workshops

The After an introductory time, based on your ideas, interests, motivation, and network, we will start building the honours lab and its curriculum. The broad theme will be: living, learning, and change-making in the climate crisis. While remaining open to the direction of students, the following “Futuring Workshops” structure will support us in realizing our learning journey:

RE:VIEW | Reflection phase (December)

In a brainstorming environment, we will review and reflect on questions, such as: How do you experience the current educational system? What are the things you would want to change or keep?  What are the specific tensions between how we currently learn in academic environments, and what learning in/for a climate crisis requires from us? After a few brainstorm sessions, we are going to map out a pool of themes that have emerged, which will serve as the basis of our learning journey for the rest of the program.

RE:IMAGINE | Utopian phase (January)

The next, utopian stage of the honours lab will focus on sharing our ideas and dreams about living, learning, and change-making in climate crisis. It will be a time to “go crazy”, to be creative, and to think out of the box. Combining the themes that have emerged from the previous phase, and our utopian ideas, we are going to lay out a vision of the learning projects we want to carry out. Finally, during the utopian phase we will start shaping the Future of Academia Lab into our space, making it represent our vision(s) of living, learning, and change-making in the climate crisis.

RE:PLACE | Realization phase (February-May)

The final, realization phase is about making our dreams and visions happen, and molding RE:PLACE into an educational program that facilitates our learning needs the best. For example, there will be room and funding to reach out to your networks and invite lectures and practitioners from different fields to give workshops; to organize excursions; and to initiate and carry out small, local interventions that have the potential to bring about eco-social change. You will also continue to use and build the Future of Academia Lab.

Hosting

Throughout the honours lab six educational hosts will guide the learning journeys, while also staying learners themselves.

Outcome and deliverables

• Written Personal Reflections: All participants (including educational hosts) will write personal reflections about their learning journey every two weeks. These will be uploaded into a cloud.
• Eco-social interventions (also possible in smaller groups): Each of you will design and carry out small interventions that have the potential to bring about eco-social change. At the end of the program you will exhibit these in the form of your choosing.  It is also possible to make this into a group project.
• Participation and co-hosting the learning journey: Participation in the RE:PLACE sessions is not mandatory. However, you will get out of this honours lab what you bring in. The kind of participation we look for is high energy, with idealism, and motivation to make things happen. RE:PLACE will only happen if students co-host, and co-organize their learning journey.
• Participating / becoming an action researcher/ creating a radio play: To help the Future of Academia Action Research, RE:PLACE participants will be invited to focus groups, interviews, and questionnaires. In addition, any participant who wishes to more actively engage in the research can join the action research group. This will also include  partaking in the making of a RE:PLACE radio play, an artistic research format carried out by hosts and RE:PLACE participants.

Interested?

Join the information session 19 October - 17:00-18:00: Stieltjesstraat 2, Nijmegen. The application deadline is 12 November 2021. Your application entails a portfolio consisting of a motivation letter (maximum of 300 words) and a CV. If you prefer more creative forms of engaging us, you are welcome to change up the 300 words motivation letter to any other format.

You can apply using this application form. If you have any questions, please contact Floor Binkhorst (floor.binkhorst@ru.nl) or Rozalia Tóth (rozalia.toth@ru.nl).