Lived Experience, Lifelong Learning, Community Activism and Social Change

This book identifies and celebrates the learning adult educators can gain from the numerous sites of community activism, learning, and social change that are currently taking place across the globe. While the relentless push of neoliberalism has struck at the heart of adult education provision in many countries, including that provided by universities, institutions of further education, international development agencies, NGOs, vocational training centres and the local government sector, what can adult educators learn and what is being learnt when we turn to sites of community activism as a mechanism for broader social change? Drawing on empirical research, as well as stories and blogs about social change and transformation from those participating in community activist struggles, this book features diverse contributions from adult education practitioners, theorists and activist-researchers who share community activist practices from around the world and provide insight into the ways these have contributed to social change and political transformation in different spaces and communities. Each chapter and blog in this collection relate to different dimensions of community, democracy and dialogue and how this space has become one in which delimiting factors must constantly be fought. In these contributions, questions of critical pedagogy and voice, and contested notions of power, place and voice, are lived, felt and troubled in different national and international contexts. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in the Education of Adults.

Sharon Clancy is Assistant Professor in education at the University of Nottingham, UK. She co-convenes, with Iain Jones, the Research Circle on Fostering Democracy, Debate and Dialogue. Sharon is Vice-Chair of the Raymond Williams Foundation and a commissioner on the Centenary Commission, Communications Officer for SCUTREA and co-editor of Studies in the Education of Adults. Iain Jones is Senior Lecturer in Education, Yr Athrofa: Centre for Education, University of Wales Trinity St David, UK, where he teaches and supervises students on EdD programmes. Iain is also co-convenor of the research circle on Fostering Democracy, Debate and Dialogue with Dr Sharon Clancy.

Introduction: Lived experience, lifelong learning, community activism and social change Section 1: Critical pedagogy and voice 1. Critical education in the Irish repeal movement 2. Pedagogies of hope and drug-related deaths in Scotland 3. The power of narrative storytelling: How podcasts as an arts-based practice enhance solidarity and social activism in adult education 4."We are a group of excellent women" - Online activist learning with a group of migrant women during COVID-19 5. Later life learning and the demands of activism: the case of Kilburn Older Voices Exchange Section 2: Power, place and voice 6. Emancipatory interests of multiple literacies for activism and community transformation 7. 'Eye-opening': Case study of a documentary film series in a carceral setting 8. 'We are the soil' to a movement with 'peasants in the centre:' The grassroots-social movement learning nexus in Röia Montana, Romania 9. The Great Escape! A woman's reflection on collective kindness and new power models written during the pandemic 10. Celebrating resources of hope: The story and place of a research circle Afterword: Resources for a journey of hope