Inspired by Dr. Manjeet Ramgotra’s workshop Decolonizing and Re-Gendering the Curricula, a day-long workshop was developed for tutors within the Social Practices minor programme at Willem de Kooning Academy. The workshop explored how educational practices could be reshaped through decolonial, feminist, and collective approaches to learning.
The Social Practices programme investigates forms of education grounded in commoning, community-building, co-creation of knowledge, and care. It approaches cultural production as a political act capable of challenging dominant power structures and developing more embodied, situated, and collective forms of learning.
During the workshop, teaching teams from the programme’s four study areas — Cultural Diversity, New Earth, Power Play, and Performative Action — critically examined their syllabi through a decolonial and re-gendering lens. Participants questioned whose voices and traditions were represented, how knowledge was taught, and what perspectives were excluded. In a second phase, the teams redesigned their syllabi by reconsidering key concepts, authors, and pedagogical methods to imagine more inclusive and transformative educational practices. The teaching teams then came together to discuss and reflect on the experience, engaging with critical texts on transformative pedagogy and collectively considering how these approaches could reshape their teaching practices.
