HEdge Space Concept

HEdge Space is the name of the co-researching project that occurred within the PhD. It denotes a public site and situation of radical learning & research for social-environmental justice change which occurs outside of public schooling. 

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This research borrows from the Hedge schools of 18th Century Ireland and wove it together with the emancipatory practices of Radical Adult Education, Participatory Action Research, interventionist social practice art and permaculture.

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This fusion of practices created a counter-hegemonic assembly space and a social-ecological learning-research edge. In this space​ the co-researching community participated in and co-created holistic praxis workshops. In these workshop issues of social-environmental justice effecting their lives were explored to inform collective actions for change. Through that collaborative experiential workshopping we simultaneously developed new creative and embodied holistic learning for action tools to support more inclusive participation in social movements.

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This research weave was positioned as a Transdisciplinary Feminist Public Pedagogy Research practice orientated to deep rather than shallow sustainability.

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Irish Hedge schools

Hedge Space borrows from the Hedge schools of 18th Century Ireland, places where people gathered illegally for unofficial educational purposes near hedges, rivers, overhanging rocks, in mud huts and chapels as a response to imperial occupation and the oppressive cultural colonisation (cultural hegemony) waged upon them during occupation (Lyons, 2016). This form of self-organised community education continues to be enacted as an informal learning and cultural practice by a diverse range of groups in Ireland encompassing, but not exclusive to, the arts, heritage and activism.​​​​. 

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​Emancipatory practices

Emancipatory practices such as radical adult and community education, participatory action research and social practice art are  democratic, bottom up collaborative practices orientated to emancipatory social justice. These practice support communities to voice issues affecting their lives and to work collectiviey to transform the conditions under which they are all living.

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Radical Adult Education

Radical Adult Education is a field of learning that happens outside of formal schooling curriculums for the purpose of bringing about social-environmental justice, for example, in social movement spaces, grassroots organizations. It is concerned with the nature and purpose of knowledge and its capacity to oppress or liberate people. It fundamentally challenges the hidden curriculum of formal schooling which it asserts socialises people to accept the logic of status quo

 

Permaculture & Ecological Edge Effects. 

In ecology, edge effects is the process by which newness and diversity is created by the meeting at the margins of two or more lifeforms, such as how fungi and algae together form lichens (Holmgren; PermaculturePrinciples.com; Haraway, 2016).

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​Edge effects in ecology can reflect creative meetings in the social world such as, the process by which  theory interacts with practice to produce new insight or  action, or how different ideas,  disciplines or materials interact or fuse to create something new. It can also reflect how the two halves of our bodies, the interior and exterior intertwine and engage perceptually with the world, and how people and the different facets of life, the social, ecological, economic, political, cultural, historical interact to create plural realities (Garoian, 2013; Lawrence, 2008; Lawrence, 2012; Merleau-Ponty and Lefort, 1968).

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Edge effects | Knowledge Base (permaculture.org.uk)