Project:  Vectors of Collective Imagination

Description: The project extends the collaboration that began in 2012 with the Aesthetic Education Expanded, a project that sought to update the notion of aesthetic education - connecting art, imagination and democracy - for the age of digital networks. Vectors of Collective Imagination revisits this emancipatory notion, inquiring how a new political geography taking shape in Europe, marked by the refugee crisis, rising Islamophobia, economic disparities and hardening illiberalism, is challenging our collective imagination and its aesthetic means.Our aim is to organise 7 large events (festivals, conferences, exhibitions) in our respective locales and to address some facets of that central concern. The events will connect the dots between key places (Egypt, Maghreb, Northern Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe) of that new geography and artistic responses that can help foster a new collective imagination against retrograde political tendencies in Europe and beyond. We're particularly suited for this as we're all rooted in our social environments in a context of activists, neighbourhood communities, worker educations associations, schools, universities and critically engaged media which will be included in our activities.All 7 events (segment: ACTORS) have formats that range from high-profile – aimed at presenting writers, visual artists, film-makers and theorists to popular and diverse audiences – to educational aimed at connecting artists and practitioners with high-schoolers, young migrants, young artists and art students.These events will be accompanied by tools (segment: TOOLS): an online database and a toolbox documenting best collective practices and methodologies, and publications (segment: VECTORS): two anthologies of Arabic literatures, a monograph on avant-garde collective practices and pamphlets responding to themes of the project. These are all meant to disseminate project's creative and intellectual outputs to wide transnational audiences.