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 creative and radical learning & research which occurs outside of public schooling and for the purpose of working towards social-environmental justice.

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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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This HEdge Space school weaves together the emancipatory practices of Radical Adult Education, Participatory Action Research, interventionist social practice art and permaculture. ​

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​Emancipatory practices

Emancipatory practices are bottom-up, collaborative and democratic practices orientated to changing political and economic structures which cause social inequality and ecological destruction. These practice support communities to voice issues affecting their lives and to work collectivity to transform the conditions under which they are all living.

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This Hedge Space​ created an assembly space for a co-researching community to form and co-create holistic workshops to enable communities take action.

In these workshop issues of social-environmental justice effecting the co-researchers' lives were explored to inform collective actions for change. These workshops also created an opportunity to build counter-hegemonic culture.

 

Through the collaborative experiential workshop practice we simultaneously developed new creative, embodied and holistic learning for action tools to support more inclusive participation in social movements.

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This holistic research approach was also positioned as a Transdisciplinary Feminist Public Pedagogy practice orientated to deep rather than shallow sustainability.

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Radical Adult Education

Radical Adult Education is a field of learning that happens outside of formal schooling 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 power 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 the status quo

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Social Practice Art:

 

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)

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A social-ecological learning-research edge.