Samoa House Library is excited to announce *curriculum*, a free and open education program. *curriculum* launches next Saturday with an introductory discussion group that brings together a range of local practitioners engaged with pedagogy in the arts. 

 

The immediate context of Samoa House Library’s formation was the University of Auckland’s decision to close the Elam Fine Arts library, a decision that we think reflects a deeper crisis in tertiary art education. SHL wants to use this crisis as an opportunity to think deeply about art education, using the library itself - both as an institutional form and idea - as an educational model. *curriculum* education programme that is free and open to the public. Each week, a different practitioner will choose a text that has been pivotal to their thinking or way of working. 

The programme’s open and nonlinear structure allows participants to attend as many or as few sessions as they want. Within this programme, the relationship between teacher and learner, speaker and listener will be actively interrogated and tested. While each session will be guided by our invited practitioners, the voices of all participants are equally weighted. 
Each week two sessions will be held: a reading group lead by the Samoa House Library board on a Wednesday evening will allow for a collective encounter with a text chosen by the invited practitioner. The following Saturday afternoon, this practitioner will lead a group discussion departing from this text. 

Each text will be made available, either digitally or physically, by Samoa House Library prior to Saturday’s discussion.

 

*curriculum* has been made possible by support from Creative New Zealand.