Inventer l'école, penser la co-création

A publication by artist and teacher-researcher Marie Preston on the alternative pedagogies developed in France during the 1970s-1990s in “open” schools working on the question of the relationship between co-creation and coeducation (new, expanded edition).

The teaching teams featured in this book were convinced that the school system had to be radically transformed to counteract social reproduction, and they did it! A veritable breeding ground for educational, relational and institutional inventions, these experiences have much to teach us today. Particularly with regard to cooperative and co-creative artistic practices, which share with them a desire and ways of doing things, such as that of social transformation, co-management, the emergence of common ground and collective creation.

The book moves back and forth between testimonies and interviews with the actors and actresses of this history, and elements of contextualization and analysis opening onto artistic practices of co-creation. The book includes an interview with Jean Foucambert, a discussion with Rolande and Raymond Millot (Vitruve school, Paris and Villeneuve de Grenoble) and an unpublished text by André Virengue, director for 20 years of the Jacques-Prévert school in Villeneuve d’Ascq. Iconography plays an important role in the research. In particular, it reveals pupils’ achievements, as well as school newspapers and other printed matter.