THINKING THROUGH…

THINKING THROUGH… was a series of creative events and workshops that ran throughout summer 2019, exploring how we learn and unlearn together. Most activities took place within and around Lauren Godfrey’s exhibition Group Hat, which transformed the First floor gallery into an open/experimental learning space.

Developed collaboratively between Exhibitions and Learning & Participation teams, THINKING THROUGH… was based around principles of knowledge exchange. The content of each session emerged from conversations with colleagues across the De La Warr Pavilion and with other individuals and organisations.

The aims of THINKING THROUGH… were:
• To find inclusive ways of sharing and developing knowledge, inside and outside our organisation
• To highlight radical cultural practices, past and present, as tools for shaping our collective future
• To address urgent social and political challenges
• To empower people to make change in the world.

THINKING THROUGH… happened as the De La Warr Pavilion examines how it can respond to the current crisis in arts education and to increasing disagreement about society’s common purpose. THINKING THROUGH… emerged from our desire to better understand how individuals and organisations can build communities of meaningful enquiry and discovery, and how more equitable relationships can be cultivated in our organisation and in society at large.

The 12 events that happened as part of THINKING THROUGH… included a workshop on how to co-design inclusive learning spaces, a discussion about the healing value of community gardens, a climate action forum and a seminar about how we might use ‘urban’ Bauhaus principles in a rural setting. We worked with UCL, The Bartlett School of Architecture, Slade School of Fine Art, Institute of Education, Bexhill Festival of the Sea, Hastings & Rother Refugee Buddy Project, O N C A, Extinction Rebellion, Collington Allotment Society, Bexhill Dementia Action Alliance Allotment Group, Chantry Community Primary School, All Saints Primary School, artists Celia Pym, Scott Garrett and Elena Cologni, Sarah Hughes (West Dean College of Arts and Conservation), Ola Uduku (Manchester School of Architecture), Martyn Evans (U+I), Amy Butt (University of Reading), Fiona MacDonald (Chelsea College of Arts), and our colleagues across the organisation, who we met with regularly during morning sessions to discuss what and how they wanted to learn.

The programme we delivered was ambitious. We experimented with new ways of working together based on inclusive conversation and non-hierarchal decision-making: a process that took effort as we tried to deconstruct old habits and encourage the same in others. It also took a lot of overtime to adapt to a new way of working whilst delivering continuing programmes.

We want to embed the principles that we articulated as part of THINKING THROUGH… in our organisation, to keep asking the questions that underpinned many of the workshops and sessions, and to find ways to be better citizens. To do this, we are continuing to work together to undertake a period of reflection and evaluation.

THINKING THROUGH… events coming up will be

The One-Word Reading Group
6 January
6.30 – 8pm
Join us for an informal discussion around the language we use to talk about art, focusing on just one word and its meanings. On 6 January  we invite you to think about the word ‘agency’.

Agency can mean the capacity, condition, or state of acting on one’s will or of exerting power. This ability is affected by the cognitive belief structure formed through one’s experiences, and the perceptions held by society and the individual, of the structures and circumstances of the environment one is in.

You are invited to bring a short sentence, paragraph or article that talks about the ‘agency’and share it in a group discussion. No further reading is necessary.

Book here.