Multi Public Educational Spaces

In this paper, I am drawing on both my PhD research into spaces that combine the trinal functions of school, community centre and cultural space, and on my experience – which triggered my doctoral research in the first place – of setting up, directing and passing on the reins of the independent art school and community space Open School East. Examining the genealogy of such spaces in England and further afield, as well as the qualities, values, and prerequisites of what I have proposed to name ‘multi-public educational and cultural organisations’, I am enquiring what organisational, programmatic and spatial formations and approaches may be required to run and sustain multi-purpose and multi-visions organisations. By opting to operate on different fronts and across diverse co-existing temporalities, these spaces set themselves up against the status quo and aspire to be differential.