“What shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” Milan Kundera’s question sets the scene for our summer school. Kundera says that the heavier the burden we carry, the more truthful our lives become. The lighter the burden, the freer we are, but the more insignificant our actions become. Whether we are in fact free and how we deal with our freedom, are questions we keep returning to during the four weeks of this summer school.
Taking our cue from Kundera’s question, “What shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”, the theme of the summer school is freedom. The first part of our investigation into freedom deals with the individual. Then we look at freedom in society and finally we examine political freedom, all the time keeping an eye on the individual, asking at each turn, who am I now and who will I choose to become?
Through a combination of academic and creative subjects, we will look at the idea of freedom using London as our classroom. While lectures form the theoretical foundation of the course, you will engage with the world in a hands-on and creative way to get to grips with the problems you are confronted with. A series of projects will get you out onto the streets of London where you will create something beautiful that can be given back to the city.
We welcome gap year takers, students with a love for the arts and humanities and anyone with an interest in world affairs and their own political future.
London is a main character in our course. We will use it, mine it, dig through its archives, question its inhabitants, record it, and, in general, make it part of us as we go along. You will not see London. You will experience it.
If you happen to be on your gap year, you could do worse than to travel through the coolest city on the planet and be part of something radically new that would make you see the world in a different light.
The course
The ‘snapshots’ below give you a glimpse of what a week on the summer school might look like. Each one represents a few days of lectures, field-trips and creative work. Each forms a whole, but also fits into the bigger picture created by the overall course theme. Every part of the course is a small work of art – the result of the passionate vision of our lecturers.
Snapshot 1
Snapshot 2
Snapshot 3
What we don’t show in the snapshots is the guiding thread consisting of lectures that provide a structured outline for the summer school as a whole. In these lectures we will read about and discuss ideas that deal to some extent with the material covered in the snapshots, but here you get an opportunity to explore even further and to try and make sense of the different pieces on a more theoretical level.
In few other courses will you find yourself more engaged by the creative activities and assignments that accompany each part of the course. Everything you write, create, photograph and film will not only be exhibited, but some contributions will also be published in our online literary journal.
There is a growing number of UK universities that offer excellent liberal arts programmes but even the hippest university is bound by fairly rigid structures. Our independence, on the other hand, allows us to connect ideas and explore the world freely.
Join us for four weeks and discover a London you only imagined …
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