Project for a new school.

1. If you have a garden and a library,
you have everything you need.
A project for a new school
work in progress
version 1.0, October 2019
Anne-Sophie Gauvin, Stefano Mirti
HURRA, Halle, 5/7 October 2019

2. Intro 1/8
Thanks to Hurra Hurra for inviting us here today!
And thanks to you for being in this workshop with us…
:-)
(by the way, here is the mindmap we created together in our workshop).
If it works, it’s obsolete
(Marshall McLuhan)

3. Without us noticing, we are entering the post-capitalist era.
At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy.
The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian.
(Paul Mason, The End of Capitalism)
Intro 2/8

4. This presentation is a draft.
Some internal and external hyperlinks, quotes, references, different
concepts and ideas, different options and possibilities.
By reading this document, you might from time to time feel lost.
This feeling of being (a little) lost, belongs to us as well:
we are at the beginning of a long journey, and this is good.
Move on, move back, explore different possibilities… .
..a little bit like being in a maze.
Eventually frustrating, but also fun.
Later on, hopefully, our ideas will get clearer.
Intro 3/8

5. Cicero once said that if you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
What if… ...we imagined a school that consisted of exactly this: a garden and a library?
Wouldn’t it be fantastic?
An ever growing garden and library. A never ending project-based
workshop entirely designed and built by a community of students,
teachers, beginners, experts, mentors, friends.
One seed and book at a time, and everything in between for the
seeds to grow and the pages to be written and read.
A blank page awaits.
Intro 4/8
Join us as we prepare to draw the outline of what this school could become.

6. The two ingredients for our school
(in terms of “what we want to do”):
a garden and a library
Intro 5/8

7. In terms of “what”, as we wrote, it is a library and a garden,
In terms of “how” (third ingredient),
we imagine a community.
Intro 6/8

8. What is this presentation about?
A description of our ideal school.
A school that does not exist.
For the time being, it exists just in our mind.
Normally, you start with some kind of analysis
and then you synthetize it into a project.
Here, we do the opposite exercise: we start
from a possible vision, and then, going
backward, we explain the hows,
whats, etc.etc.etc.
We spent years working in and on schools.
Traditional, innovative, on-line, off-line,
experimental, well-established.
We tried a lot.
Now, it is time to think about a new school.
Intro 7/8

9. Important!
With this presentation / workshop we want to:
- share our recent ideas and thoughts.
- get useful feedback(s) from the participants
- check if someone is interested in our vision (to become a group of
passionate people, from different places, with different backgrounds, this is
the real point)
- move from ideas to reality (we want to do this thing for real, it is not a
speculative exercise)
(here, an important poem to read before to start / if you read it your understand what kind of school we have in mind).
Intro 8/8

10. What’s the purpose of learning?
For centuries higher education has been the place where students would learn some kind of
trade. Some would become doctors, others accountants, engineers, mechanics...
You go to school to learn (and later get) a job.
But in a world where most of the work will be done by software and robots, what is higher
education for?
In 2019, if you learn to work as an accountant (or as a mechanic), this could be problematic
(since most of the accounting work is done by machines).
If you learn to work with wood or to play the flute, you might not get a job from it, but you learn
how to live better.
It is not about learning things belonging to some faraway past.
It is about learning things you could become passionate about.
To learn as a detached activity from earning money from a day job.
Extra 1/12

11. Our school in a few sentences
In terms of “what” (as we already mentioned),
in terms of “how”, it’s a community.
a school to be built by all the people involved in the project
(learning by doing).
it’s a play ,
it’s a game
without forgetting the digital and social media.
it’s a long term project
a day after day challenge.
why?
it’s all about passion
…
Some references (draft)?
(after Borges’ poem, here’s an important book to read. If you read it, you’ll understand the kind of school we have in mind).
What we want to do 1/8

12. Why a garden?
Because it needs to be cared for day after day. Plants need water, light, nutrients… You cannot skip a day
because they will die. The discipline needed here is given to us by nature and by time.
If you want to learn how to draw, you draw one hour per day. If today you skip, tomorrow you draw twice as
much. In a garden, this doesn’t work. It has to be day after day, no break, no holiday, no nothing.
An ever-growing garden…
Also, have you ever heard about the notion of incremental gain? In terms of final benefit what is relevant is
the length of time. The longer you do a given activity, the higher the return.
There is no shortcut!
To run a garden in a proper way, it is a political statement.
(back?)
What we want to do 2/8

13. If you were to imagine a school as a garden,
a physical and a digital one,
what kind of thoughts would you come up with?
What is the purpose of this garden? What are its components?
Is it a garden to wander and get lost in?
Is it one to preserve and conserve,
like some kind of Noah’s ark for plants?
How would we plan this garden?
What system would we use
to ensure that our garden is given the right conditions
for it to prosper?
What would be the first seed that we would plant?
What about the other forms of life?
And what about the digital side of things?
Can people from the opposite side of the world
visit our garden and interact with our plants?
How could they actively participate in it?
(back?)
What we want to do 3/8

14. If we talk about gardening (and gardeners),
the reference is: Being There, a great movie by Hal Ashby, 1979.
(back?)
Extra 2/12

15. We chose a garden, but we could have gone for something more ambitious…
Ever seen the documentary Biggest Little Farm?
It is about building a farm from scratch.
A farm is different than a garden, but it teaches us quite well that once you start playing with life,
you have to be very careful with what you do. Unexpected things can happen and this is one of the
reasons why our daily care and attention is required
When we think about it, maybe this garden could have a “farm” extension to it… A place where we
grow and harvest our crops, for us to consume them, and even eventually sell them to the local
community. This could become some kind of source of revenue for the school…
The good thing with having a farm or a garden is that once you
start growing food, a whole range of new opportunities present
themselves to you.
If we can eat our crops, then we should learn how to cook. And why not invite
people over and cook for them? Our garden could even have its own little restaurant.
A garden 3/3
We chose a garden, but we
could have gone for
something more ambitious…
Ever seen the documentary
Biggest Little Farm?
It is about building a farm
from scratch.
A farm is different than a
garden…
(back?)
What we want to do 4/8

16. An orchard or a garden?
Before we move on, one more thought.
In our school, will we have a garden or an orchard?
Or both?
This is a seminal question.
For the time being we don’t have an answer.
Maybe, the community should decide…
(back?)
What we want to do 5/8
What we want to do 5/8

17. At Domaine de Boisbuchet, Daniel Parnitzke
takes care of a herb and vegetable orchard...
Corresponding to the regional vegetation and
seasonal cycles, herbs and vegetables are grown
to supplement the kitchen.
(Daniel Parnitzke)
(this section is over, time to move back)
Extra x/12

18. Extra x/12

19. Why a library?
Of course, it is those 100 books we really value.
And then, the list grows, because each of us has his own books.
Then, magazines.
Movies, music, websites, games.
Traditionally you would to go to the library to get books you don’t have (or that you can’t afford).
Today apart from books, it should be about software, machines, technologies.
Curated content(s).
A place where information is organized into a series of different archives.
It should be a place where you find people to talk to.
Back then, the librarian would help you search for books.
Today, he or she could help you operate a 3D printer.
A place to spend your whole day, watch a movie…
(back?) (if you are curious about contemporary libraries, you could read this interesting article, from the New York Times)
What we want to do 6/8

20. We have an analog library.
But what about our digital one?
What kind of dynamics does it offer?
How does it relate to our analog library?
What makes it special? What does it specialise in?
Who can access it and how does it work?
There will be a analog library as well as a digital one.
How to shape the digital one, is open to discussion.
What do you think about it?
(back?)What we want to do 7/8

21. A library and (eventually) a publishing house.
What kind of content should we develop and share?
To collect books, movies, software, tools we like and we need.
But then, we should probably imagine some kind of “production”.
A community-based library,
together with a community-based publishing house.
What to collect, what to share?
By the way, recently, we were given the challenge to come up with a general list of design books.
This is what we came up with…
What about you?
Could you make a similar list on a subject you are particularly interested in?
(this section is over, time to move back)
What we want to do 8/8
The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges (1941)

22. Why a community?
Before being a school, it is a community.
Of course you have teachers and students, but, foremost, it is a community where you find different people with different
(levels of) expertise. A community with its own rules and system of relations.
Upon our experience, we came to the conclusion that the best way to share knowledge
between people (in our times) has to do with the community system.
Some kind of horizontal relational system with clear roles and duties.
A medieval monastery is a community, football fans… ....a Facebook group is a community.
Some video games have transformed into extremely popular communities.
Wikipedia and Linux (as big as they are), are some other interesting examples.
The medium is the message, stated McLuhan some fifty years ago:
for us, the community is the message.
In terms of the conceptual frame, this is where we want to be.
(back?)
How we want to do 1/3

23. How we want to do 2/3
In terms of etymology, community comes from the Latin,
communitas (public spirit) and from ancient Greek, koinonia
(referring to “union”, a condition where the single element cannot
have an independent and autonomous existence without the whole.
The main feature is the mutual obligation between the different
elements expressed in terms or reciprocity:
to give / to receive.
Closer to us, Lennon and McCartney expressed the same concept with:
And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make
Etymology is such a useful discipline, think for instance to company.
From the Old French compagnie, arriving from Late Latin, companio (literally: bread fellow).
In Latin com means: with, and panis means: bread.
The person with whom I share my bread.
(back?)

24. How we want to do 3/3
(back?)

25. We live in a world where we need to have 3 jobs:
1. Our day job
This is a job that we can lose any day and for which we constantly need to keep on
learning new skills and adapt to the changing environment. What can we offer that a
robot can’t? Soft skills are important. Creativity, critical spirit, a capacity to see ahead
and solve problems. Empathy… The ability to persuade, work in teams… Always be
ready to move and relocate.
2. Our job in terms of social activities
If we happen to lose our day job, the connections that came with it, and find ourselves
floating naked in the dark ocean, we better have a vast and reliable network of friends
and other social relations on which we can count to help us out of the abyss. Those
from the chess club, the charity club… This is a job on its own, because it requires us to
cultivate relationships.
3. Our job in terms of personal branding
Finally, we have to take care of our own image. Who are we? What skills do we have?
How do we want others to perceive us and reach out to us for? We have to promote
ourselves, inform, entertain and inspire others. Our presence on social media should
be approached in a structured manner and stay constant in time.
See the original article (in Italian) by Enrico Verga
Extra 3/12

26. To build the school is the school.
(it is literally what the school is about)
To understand each other, once the school is finished or “complete”, if ever this would be the
case, the school would be over. However, it much more interesting to us to see this school as a
never ending one…
How would this school be built?
We imagine this school as a lab-school that evolves thanks to a series of ateliers each led by
experts in their field.
With the participation of many different people: experts, beginners, teachers, students, mentors,
friends, etc…
At the core […] is the idea people should design their homes, streets, and communities. This idea […]
comes from the observation most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by
architects, but by the people.
(Christopher Alexander on A Pattern Language)
(back?)
A school to be built by all people involved 1/2

27. The cathedral and the bazaar
It is not a top down structure.
But it is not a bottom up one either…
We would like to imagine this school as a bazaar.
There is a space and there are some rules.
You are welcome to join the bazaar, install a booth and
personalize your space, but you must respect the
bazaar’s rules and dynamics.
Some of these rules might be written while others might
not be written.
More on the Cathedral and the Bazaar subject here.
(this section is over, time to move back)
A school to be built by all people involved 2/2

28. Learning by doing, but doing what?
And, how?
This project is not a metaphor.
We really would like it to happen.
What do we do and how? To make such a thing in the past, we might have started
from buying a land and building a space with classrooms. Today, we might start with
an Instagram account, or a website…
Having to build a community, we have to think omni-channel everywhere:
we will decide where to start together with the people interested.
Our idea is that our school will come to life from the moment that it is
communicated. To communicate this school is already “the school” itself.
We should document and share everything we do.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. (Confucius)
(back)
Learning by doing

29. Form follows function?
Form follows fiction!
“A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of dialogue or singing between characters,
intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading.” (Wikipedia)
And what if this was also a performance?
One big story to be written altogether, on a daily basis.
Everyday the story evolves…
We believe storytelling should be a key ingredient in our school.
So many things will happen in this school. How can we share and
communicate these things with the rest of the world (our “public”)
in a way that they will feel part of our adventure, and will crave or more?
Because we live in a social media era, we are permanently on stage.
There should be no distinction between production of content and communication.
(back?)
A play

30. (back)

31. A place that takes us into a state of play.
One that works as a game and where it is fun to be in.
As in any game, there should be rules, challenges, players, interactions...
Ways to measure how the game is progressing…
Would there be points to accumulate?
A way in which we can get points and rewards?
Ways in which to get to “level 2”?
Would we want this?
If our school were a game, what kind of game(s) could it be?
Could it perhaps become some kind of role-playing game?
(back)
A game

32. Join us
Here we should link you to a website,
maybe a landing page.
Leave your email, fill the form, we get back to you.
We should, but we are not there yet.
The reason why we are doing these presentations
and workshops is to check your reaction, to
gather feedback, to see if there is some kind of
momentum.
If this whole thing makes some sense to you,
if you want to join us in this venture,
please let us know!
asgauvin@gmail.com
stefano.mirti@gmail.com
(back?)

33. We spent years working in all kinds of different schools.
From the traditional to the experimental ones. Fancy students, funny ones. At home,
abroad, digital and social media. Here some of the places we have been involved in (and what
we learned out of them).
- Interaction Design Institute Ivrea: a monastery and an airport.
- Design Royale: to learn is to play. The school as a festival.
- Whoami: A design game that tells you what kind of designer (and person) you are.
- Design 1o1: the MOOCs. A community where our students became teachers.
- Relational Design: the travelling school. 12 months, 12 cities, 12 teachers, 12 projects.
Super Scuola Superiore di Arti Applicate: arts & crafts Where you learn by doing.
In Ivrea (2001/2005), we learned that technology is the answer. As long as you can
remember what was the question.
Design Royale and Whoami (2011/2012), is to overlay education with digital media and gaming.
How to transform the learning experience into a fun game.
Design 1o1 (2013/ ongoing) enhances the MOOCs with a social media and community-based
structure. The community is the message!
Relational Design (2014/ ongoing) is when we realized that you can’t do it without a traditional
set up: grades, teachers, diploma. Especially if you want to be innovative, you cannot discharge
timeless tools and practices.
Super (2017/ ongoing) is timeless arts and crafts. Much stronger and more powerful than design.
We tried a lot 1/10

34. Do you want to watch an inspirational film?
if.... is a 1968 British drama film produced and directed by Lindsay Anderson satirising English
public school life. Famous for its depiction of a savage insurrection at a fictitious boys' boarding
school, the X certificate film was made at the time of the May 1968 protests in France by a director
who was strongly associated with the 1960s counterculture.
(Wikipedia)
Here, the link to buy the dvd.
(back?)
We tried a lot 2/10

35. What did we learn in Interaction Design Institute Ivrea?
- To be interesting and valuable, a school has to be cutting edge.
- Teachers and students from different cultures and different countries.
- A school is 100% about communication. Internal and external
- If you have a school in a remote place, this generates the community (with its
positive and negative sides).
- Learning has to be done while doing
- The “atelier” system: teachers work on their own activities and projects and
the students are involved in the broader sense.
(back?)
We tried a lot 3/10

36. (back?)
What did we learn while doing Design Royale?
A school as a pop-up
One or two weeks per year, on some very specific occasion.
If the school becomes a festival, the results are guaranteed.
- To play, to act, to work on a stage.
-
We tried a lot 4/10

37. What did we learn doing WhoAmI?
- Advantages and disadvantages
of adding and using gamification
in the learning process.
- To use digital and social media
in an extensive way.
- To mix traditional (analog)
tools and digital / social
ones.
(back?)
We tried a lot 5/10

38. What did we learn doing design 1o1?
- The power of the community
- The long term timeline. A school needs years and
decades.
- To use more and more social media. Social
media is our friend, not an enemy.
- Importance of the traditional workshop / meeting
(when you meet other people for real).
- To transform the students in tutors and then in
teachers.
-
(back?)
We tried a lot 6/10

39. What did we learn doing Relational Design?
- The traditional educational tools
(grades, exams, diplomas) are quite
important in the overall equation.
- To be powerful, you need partners
(ideally but not necessarily academic
ones).
- The quality comes from the iteration.
- You have to follow the students for a
long time (from their departure from
the school).
(back?)
We tried a lot 7/10

40. What did we learn doing Super, the Arts & Crafts
school?
- Especially because we live in a world
dominated by digital media, learning analog
and traditional (timeless) techniques
becomes fundamental.
- There is no split between digital and analog
media.
- What do we learn for?
- Passion vs learning a job
(back?)
We tried a lot 8/10

41. What do these experiments have in common?
- Form follows fiction
- The storytelling... the narrative… Our schools have their own stories, characters, myths, languages, alternative
geographies…
- The people and their attitude(s).
- Most of our projects / games / schools work with online / offline dynamics. It is very important for us to mix
both, and have these moments where we meet to make things together (workshops) or celebrate the end of an
activity (final exhibition and party).
- Learning by doing. Theory can be nice, but without the practice it means nothing. Workshops, laboratories,
trying, failing, improving, testing, starting over… And again. (back?)
We tried a lot 9/10

42. (back?)
One more reference, this one is not a school.
It’s a project to give new meaning and inhabitants to
the little village of Grottole, in Southern Italy.
What did we learn doing Wonder Grottole?
- If you want, you can.
- Money is not the problem: if the idea is
good and powerful, money will arrive.
We tried a lot 10/10

43. A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished.
He who is grateful for the existence of music.
He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology.
Two workmen playing, in a café in the South, a silent game of chess.
The potter, contemplating a color and a form.
The typographer who sets this page well, though it may not please him.
A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.
He who strokes a sleeping animal.
He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.
He who is grateful for the existence of a Stevenson.
He who prefers others to be right.
These people, unaware, are saving the world.
The Just
by Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Alastair Reid from: “Insomnia”,
Six Poems by Jorge Luis Borges, Harper’s Magazine, February, 1999
(back?)

44. Lessons for creating good open source software:
1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.
2. Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
3. Plan to throw one [version] away; you will, anyhow. (Copied from Frederick Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month)
4. If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
5. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
6. Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
7. Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.
8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
9. Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.
10. If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
11. The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
12. Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
13. Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away. (Attributed to
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
14. Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.
15. When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible—and never throw away information
unless the recipient forces you to!
16. When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.
17. A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.
18. To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
19. Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without
coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, Eric S. Raymond
(back)
Extra

45. (back?)

46. Black Mountain College
(back)
Some references 1/5

47. Ken Kesey, Further bus,
Merry Pranksters
(back)
Some references 2/5

48. Global Tools
(back)
Some references 3/5

49. Domaine de Boisbuchet
(back)
Some references 4/5

50. Favara Farm Cultural Park
(back)
Some references 5/5

51. Anne-Sophie Gauvin
Currently enrolled in the Digital Direction MA at the Royal College of Art, London. Has developed
different environments for people to learn, create, share and play, such as Design 101 (2014-2017)
and Whoami (2013). Co-founder of Little Coins (2017-), architecture, design and communication
studio, Guatemala.
asgauvin@gmail.com
Instagram
Facebook
Linkedin
Anne-Sophie bio 1/1
(back?)

52. Stefano Mirti
Designer, teacher, partner of IdLab, Milan. Has been working for years on new ways to teach
and to share knowledge: Design 101, Relational Design, and several other projects.
For two years, responsible for Expo Milano’s social media team.
Since September 2017, he is the head of Scuola Superiore di Arte Applicata del Castello
Sforzesco in Milan. Since July 2019, he is president of Fondazione Milano.
stefano.mirti@gmail.com
@stefi_idlab on Instagram; the Facebook page works as a big archive.
His full profile can be found on Linkedin.
http://www.idlabstudio.it/it
Stefano Mirti bio 1/1
(back?)