Mission Statement
THIS IS A PROTEST!Higher Education is a right for all not a privilege for the few. It is on this basis the Free University of Liverpool is committed to FREE education for any student who wants to study with us. At the Free University of Liverpool we believe that critical thought and action are at the heart of changing the world we live in. With this in mind we support, teach about and practice cultural activism. We believe in the strength of intervention, in the necessity of interruption and the efficacy of interference in the powers that seek to privatise and instrumentalise education. The current cuts the ConDems announced are promising to ruin civil society in the UK. This is the last straw! We will not sit here and take it any more. We will rise up and educate each other and ourselves to FIGHT BACK!
We are interested in those who wish the world were otherwise and are willing to take steps to make it otherwise. Students wishing to learn with us will take a Foundation Degree: a six month introduction course to changing the world or Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Praxis: a three-year course, taught on the ground in Liverpool by a dedicated team of cultural activists, educationalists and cultural workers with experience and formal qualifications. The Foundation Course starts in October 2011 and the BA in Cultural Praxis starts in October 2012. Lectures, seminars and workshops will form the core activities of the university with equal weight given to the power of words and the power of action. Praxis is our watchword.
These courses are validated by the blessing of leading thinkers, writers, artists and educationalists, all of whom have contributed to the course by way of interviews and lectures. They believe, like we do, that higher education is a right for all not a privilege for the few.
The Free University of Liverpool is run cooperatively by The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home (Dr Lena Simic and Dr Gary Anderson) and Dr Lorena Rivero de Beer.
