Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Located in an urban center, a storefront acquired through eminent domain by a university becomes a site and space for public teachers suffering through the effects of educational policy reforms to explore their potential and impotential as a site specific art practice. The Spaces for Possibility art collective turns inward within the storefront to preserve potential when the demands for outward performance exhaust teachers’ imagination during the school day. Through the quietness of sitting with what we can and “can not” do (Agamben, 1999), we recover and find ways to live within the demands of best practices, school shut downs, and increased performance evaluations (Brown, 2015). The storefront operates as a reprieve for the collective from the demands of neoliberal educational policy reforms. The space brings the collective into a conversation with audiences around the notion of what is of value in a public education. Educators feel isolated. Spaces for Possibility activates a site and practice for repair, restoration through contemplative art making and social engagement. As we attune to the storefront as a space for possibility, we open up to other ways of being and invite the community into a discourse with us around the notions of public space, the impact of eminent domain on local communities and spaces for imagination within the dwindling commons. This qualitative research documents the interactions within the space and beyond, attuning to events and the way in which the space is transformed over a six-month occupancy.