The New Academy
Curriculum for Change
As one of its activities, The New Academy develops a Curriculum for Change: a series of courses, talks, workshops and other activities that show and teach a plural, inclusive and interdisciplinary (design) approach to the city.
It is a local and collective initiative to turn diffuse and minority knowledge produced, developed, and displayed in Rotterdam into a new type of training programme that engages the city’s many formal and informal institutions, community organisations, and bottom-up activities. The Curriculum is a long-term project and focuses on recogniszing, valuing, and sharing this knowledge. It aims to create an alliance of knowledge producers in Rotterdam who contribute to an inclusive, just and resilient city. It aims to create a more connected and complex idea of Rotterdam as a city of knowledge where all inhabitants of Rotterdam are acknowledged and included in shaping an equitable future for the city.
The Curriculum for Change combines different knowledges: embodied and lived knowledge, artistic knowledge, more-than-human knowledge, practical everyday knowledge, theoretical knowledge, ethnically diverse knowledge and knowledge derived from stories of numerous diasporas. It encourages curiosity, confidence, trust and humility. It teaches skills such as watching, listening, connecting, resilience, and community development. It takes place in all sorts of places in the city – from community centres to gardens, auditoriums to dance halls, streets to plazas, construction sites to rivers. It is for designers, policymakers and officials, and for residents who want to engage with issues in their own living and working environment.