As Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski have proclaimed in their Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy “there are principles to defend.” Of course, not only are there principles to defend, but there are principles that are to be shared as an invitation for you to defend or reject them in your own way. In that spirit, this is a thesis about seven principles of organised naivety.

I believe that art academies can be a site of study, possibility and rehearsal for a kinder, more just world. Personally for me, the art academy has been the locus for the most important, formative experiences of my life. Good, bad and ugly – all contributing to the person that I am today. Despite our unimaginative neo-liberal politics, the art academy has been a place of hope. It’s where I have felt that together we can make the world anew. Having studied and worked within the art academy, having criticised the academy and loved the academy, I wish to share my aspirations for the art academy in hopes it can be a transformative space for everyone, as it has been for me. And while the art academy is the specific subject of my writings, I suspect that these ideas are relevant for all critical education.

It is also a thesis about love. Love for education, love for students and love for eachother as practitioners. It is through love that we can exist as Jeanne Heeswijk might say “with, within and against” the institution. Part of the institution, working with it, but also acknowledging that there will be many moments in which the humanity that we cultivate through love for eachother will be far beyond the reach of the tactics of the institution. This is no longer institutional critique, or resistance. This is how we transcend education to the spiritual realm. No amount of policy or institutional planning can operationalise the experience of love. That is something that we do together, as friends.