Learning through expanding 

The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy, stated bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994). 
Referring to that, how do we imagine the art academy of the 21st century? Is it possible to envision art schools as expansive spaces for critical reflection, cooperation, and exchange that encourage us to engage with contemporary urgencies? Similar to the notion of expanded cinema, which defies the conventional one-way relationship between the audience and the screen, we perceive the idea of an expanding academy as a potential critical stance to many existing post-graduate programs in visual and curatorial studies. Many of these programs rely on exclusive and competitive selection procedures coupled with exorbitant tuition fees, promoting a professionalized academic trajectory with the promise of advancing one’s artistic career.
We strongly believe that education should be accessible, if not entirely free (or at least minimized to cover administrative costs), and that educational platforms for research in the arts like the one we are proposing here should embody the essence of what artist Robert Filliou termed ‘teaching and learning as performing arts’. This approach would cultivate an innovative learning environment at the intersection of art, politics, ecologies, economies, and social justice, encouraging participants to develop processes that foster transformation.

The current crisis of education is intertwined with the widespread socio-economic, and political crisis that persists globally, reflecting a deficit in collective imagination. The Expanding Academy program aims to prioritise collaborative practices or artistic experiences that foster community-building, facilitating the creation of cooperative and nurturing spaces of care and highlighting the pivotal role of artistic collectivities in our contemporary society. The notion of Expanding Academy as an educational space exceeding the confines of the traditional classroom is intriguing as it invites a shift beyond the exhibition-centric environment. This expansion involves engagement with diverse contexts, raising social awareness, fostering innovative forms of solidarity, and enhancing our living conditions. However, considering the varied perspectives from which facts and fiction can be observed, how can we transform and re-invent our living and learning conditions when these perspectives are radically questioned and reversed? Echoing Audre Lorde’s sentiment that “Poetry is not a luxury, but it is vital to the human condition,” underscores the importance of embracing creative expression and artistic thought as fundamental aspects of the human experience.

It forms the quality of the light within which we name the nameless so that it can be thought made into various languages, ideas, and tangible actions. Artists serve as the conduits in society that unveil through poetry that which has yet to come into being. Our program, taking the form of an expanding academy, aligns its mission with this artistic ability to envision and re-imagine novel relationships between things and people that were previously unrelated, thereby generating new realities.
The program will function as a complementing narrative to prepare us for an ecological, sustainable, and socially just future.
A micro-scale program in the arts with a highly experimental and adaptable approach, it emphasizes multi-versal and transdisciplinary research methods, collaborative learning, and new models of exchange based on reciprocity and self-organization. This program is a process-oriented, research-based project rather than a traditional learning system. To quote Sarat Maharaj: “Do we still need academies as we know them today?” We aim to invite artists, practitioners, and participants to co-create a program that can be accessible and shared amongst every student, researcher, and teacher in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp as well as different audiences beyond the academy’s confines.