filled up the university’s online calendar with ideas for lectures and discussions, on everything from the banking crisis and the Arab spring to theology and forming a credit union. Speakers have included the academic David Harvey, journalist Polly Toynbee and US politician and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson.
Public debate The Tent City University was, Stanley explains, to an extent a reaction to the perception that ‘formal education is becoming more and more commodified and inaccessible’. The organisers wanted to challenge that. ‘It’s about renewing the spirit of public debate [in the face of] the cuts we are seeing, and the narrowing of opportunity for people to access further education and, subsequently, higher education. The idea was that anyone can teach and everyone can learn. And it still is.’ Stanley herself has spent the past four years in higher education and was, until recently, a mature students’ officer for her students’ union, at Goldsmith’s, University of London. ‘Having left the university environment and then found myself in this one it has really blown me away,’ she says. ‘It is very different to what I experienced at university. I don’t want to say it was a bad experience at university because it’s changed everything for me. But going forward from that foundation I personally have been really excited by the people and the environment, by the amount of dialogue. You realise what is possible. Who knew it could be this exciting and dynamic and scary?’ Because the Tent City University took off and grew so quickly there was little opportunity to consider how to take the work forward, though discussions are underway to ensure that the initiative is built on and that education remains a pivotal part of Occupy 2.0, whatever form that takes. The university’s sister scheme, the
SWords in the window of the ‘Bank of Ideas’, one of the buildings Occupy London took over near the capital’s financial district
SPRING 2012 ADULTS LEARNING 23
c Maggie Sully/Alamy
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