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No School Manifesto

Betje Stevens

Bijgewerkt op: 11 mei 2020

Lemmi B - Blank Space


We’ve been drawing a map, including questions, prompts, and blank spaces to write and sketch. To enter this blank space on the map, is to enter the zone of possibilities and hope. In No School Manifesto blank space is an invitation to think, an encouragement to provide additions and pose new questions. How do we generate meaning together? How can creativity improve the world?

In a similar quest for answers to such questions, Lucas De Man claims: ‘I don’t know, but neither do you. Only when you admit that you don’t know, you can meet ourself, someone else, or the world.’ This raises the question of whether we dare to embrace this notknowing in all its vulnerability? No School does: we don’t know, but others don’t know either. We do, however, search for possible answers. Starting from not-knowing we explore the space, the boundaries, and the unbounded. This is how we explore borderless learning. Where can we find common ground? Can we arrive at a ‘shared problem space’ with a focus on issues that concern us all? One of the ways to engage in this exploration together is by applying the Open Space Method. Open Space is a simple, powerful, and dynamic work form that provides space for debate and collaboration. Applying the Open Space principle greatly enhances involvement, ownership, and effectiveness, as the input comes from the participants themselves. They are running the show. What would it be like if we could apply this formula of openness to creative learning trajectories? What images arise when we transform our blank space by changing our perspective? Source Man, L. De (2018). Ik weet niet, dus ik ben: Zoektocht en strijd van een Nieuwe Held. Gent: Academia Press

Betje Stevens (1961) is an artist-teacher-education developer at SintLucas. Change begins with yourself and therefore she follows the lifelong study of the Knowledge Book (Het Kennis Boek) to promote the universal awareness that everything is connected. In No School she sees opportunities to collaboratively develop urgently needed changes in education.



Lau van Herpen - Onderweg [On the way] (photo: Sacha Hoebergen)

‘Quite often, my photographs don’t tell very much as images as such. By making combinations, associations or a narrative emerge. In this way, the viewers can walk through my world of being on the way.’


Afbeeldingen eindexamenwerk SintLucas Ruimtelijk Vormgeven - Samuel Hovener The circle, the line and the process endure, ready to transform another blank space….

Manouk Streur – Over Open Space [About Open Space] Betje Stevens: ‘Say, Manouk, how do you feel about the Open Space Principle?’

Manouk: ‘An open space is a place for movement and practice. Students can place their work there in their own way and everyone can stand around it or walk through it to later exchange feedback. We write down feedback for each other on small strips of paper. Each student then ends up with some twenty strips of “tangible” feedback. I glue the strips to “my” wall, so I can fall back on the earlier feedback when discussing my work. I’ve noticed after a while that the open space makes us students feel freer and also that the bond among us becomes stronger.’


Podcast No School Station These are exactly the times to rethink education because what is happening right now is showing us that just staying with the normal won’t do! No school together with ArtEZ Art Education brings out this four part miniseries.


Listen here on Spotify.







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© 2020 Betje Stevens          
Viltkunstenaar - Onderwijs Onwikkelaar - Het Kennis Boek       
Eindhoven, Nederland
Webdesign: Sam Scheuermann
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