Making Education a Priority (MEaP)

Welcome to our Project Page!

Publications and Outputs

Our Education Research from a Community Critical Race Perspective

Making Education a Priority (MEaP) is the legacy of a lively conference with the community that we hosted in 2013, where Diane Abbott MP was keynote speaker (also see Diane Abbott’s work with us in 2020, here). Themes around Culture, Identity, Community and Governance emerged from all of the excellent contributions to the conference. You will read in detail how these themes, firmly rooted in Education, began to define a pathway towards Social Justice in a practical way, for our communities. In our workshops (see Conference Resources) we explored the models of Free Schools, Co-operative Schools, Studio Schools, Supplementary Schools and Arts-led Special Schools. We also had workshops about thinking of Alternative Education as Protest, which gave us an insight into what “Critical Pedagogy” could actually look like on the ground, in our communities. You will also be able to get a sense of our progress directly after the conference by reading our Newsletters on the page.

Our 2013 conference trailer

Our Palgrave book publication, Alternative Education and Community Engagement: Making Education a Priority from the conference can be read here.

Here is Dianne Abbott’s (MP) keynote speech from the conference

You can download a selection of the chapters from the book:

Making Education a Priority: An overview

Shoe horning the Arts into Education; for whose benefit? Arts-led Special Schools

The Great Debate? Free, Studio and Co-operative Schools

Making Education a Priority: Where do we go from here? Towards a Community-Led Approach to Education