A new Pinky Show episode posted about the kitties traveling to meet with other radical education thinkers.

Pinky talks about things she saw and learned while in Slovenia, like

• Radical Cartography (if you’re interested check out this and this)
• Social Center ROG- a bicycle factory transformed into an “autonomous public space” for social justice, learning and art. Pinky thinks this might not be able to happen in America where we have a much more divided understanding of social and private, but I think these kinds of things are happening and could flourish specifically in Detroit, where we have so much space like this, and need so much more social cohesion on a personal level.

Their videos were shown in an exhibition with other groups who promote visual learning strategies with emotion, political, justice means.  The video is a little long, but I think it’s worth it to see what other political/radical informal education groups are doing around the world. Sometimes, when you work in such a field, you get bogged down in the problems your area has, and forget that other people have the same issues and might be dealing with them in new and innovative ways.

The Takeaway on NPR had an interesting short article about the display of an exploded car from a 2007 bombing in Baghdad at the Imperial War Museum in London. One visitor reportedly said to Head of Collections at the museum, “This object doesn’t make me feel good.” Maybe we need more of that sometimes. Or maybe every object has an uncomfortable story that museums decide NOT to tell in favor of something safer.

 Look at other responses Jeremy Deller collected when the car toured the US.

This recent WSJ article about the evaluation team at Detroit Institute of Arts gives the public a better understanding of why museums conduct audience research and how it’s used. I’m currently volunteering with Matt doing some Timing and Tracking as part of the summative evaluation for the reinstallation of the entire collection. The results should be impressive, but you’ll have to wait at least a year.

Maybe museums (their objects and stories) can engage people?  And maybe we can prove our educational/emotional/radical worth legitimately?