DIY: 2011 – The Committee The Free University of Liverpool

Professional development projects BY artists FOR artists across the UK

DIY 8: 2011 – Call for Participants
Where getting into debt for your education is outlawed and your dreams are not trodden on by the big, dirty boot of capitalism.

Project Summary:
Education is a right for all not a privilege for the few. It is on this basis that the Free University of Liverpool is committed to FREE education for any student who wants to study with us. At the Free University of Liverpool we believe that critical thought and action are at the heart of changing the world we live in. Join us!

Dates, times and location(s):
September 16, 17, 18, 24, and 25, 2011
(Friday 16 September: 7pm–9pm)
(Saturdays/Sundays 17/18 and 24/25 September: 11am–5pm)
Location: Next To Nowhere Social Centre, 96 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 4HY – all events take place here.
Please email us to book your place for any or all of those times – EVERYONE welcome:[email protected]
There is no application deadline.

Application procedure:
The Free University of Liverpool calls on artists, anarchists, educationalists, radicals, libertarians, dissenters, luddites, levellers, diggers, art-activists, and others who simply can not stand the fact that ‘higher’ education is now set to be a privilege for the wealthy few instead of a fundamental right for everyone. This is a call for those who are just plain angry at the government and want to DO something about it. Let’s do something together!

Join us in the struggle to make critical education accessible to anyone who wants it.
Together we will decide what needs to be learnt and taught. Together we will teach and learn it. We are interested in teachers who want to be students and students who want to be teachers. We are interested in artists who want to be activists and activists who want to be artists.
We need to educate ourselves to fight back and fight back in order to educate ourselves.

Over two weekends in the second half of September 2011, we will meet to discuss and develop the curriculum and structure of the Foundation Degree for The Free University of Liverpool.
We want to look at ways we can protest, creatively, beautifully, in solidarity, where we learn by doing as well as by reading and discussing, where we learn what’s on the other side of the world by learning what’s right in front of us.

This is a national call and we particularly welcome people with connections or an interest in Liverpool. There are all sorts of levels to get involved at – ranging from being a full member with lots of responsibility all the way through to very occasional visitors who gives a talk once every five years.

Bring your skills, whatever they are. We need someone with the energy/desire/guts to imagine how to change the world.

Email: [email protected] to book your place on creating the course that wants to change the world.

The Artists:
We are ‘The Committee’ of the Free University of Liverpool, committed to FREE education for anybody who wants it. We set up this project as a protest against the cuts to education that the ConDem government is continuing to push through parliament despite overwhelming opposition from the people. We came together to carry out this protest from other art-activist projects we were working on, but can’t disclose our names for fear of reprisals from the educational institutions we work at and so will from this time forth be known anonymously as ‘The Committee’ of the Free University of Liverpool.

“The Free University of Liverpool” was a response to PLATFORM’s DIY 8 Call for Ideas “Ethics will be the aesthetics of the future”.