As a contribution to making the living economy, the college carries out formacion work. producing literacy across three landscapes of practice. Here we describe these.
By **formacion**, I mean: - Practices of skilful, *alternative production* . . - of activist *formations*, which . . - have the capability to produce radically alternative, working ‘chunks’ . . - of *forces of production* (FoPs) . . - in three necessarily interweaving but differently inhabited *landscapes of practice*: material, cultural and aesthetic.
This approach puts us into a ‘cultural’ frame, which is to say, a frame of producing and differently-producing **the forces of production of knowing and organising**. This might be thought of as ‘a politics of knowledge’. It’s for this reason that I see the proposed project as ‘a college’.
The college is a project of 'cultural' production - landscape §2 in the schema below. Making the living economy is a project of material production: 'the real economy' (§1 below). The faculty of care work is centrally concerned with a'esthetic' production (§3 below). All three landscapes are essential in making the living economy. All three are always inescapably present in practice. Necessary literacy for activists spans all three. Thus the faculty of care sits alongside others with a different focus.
Three landscapes of practice, underlying the pattern language of making the living economy
Ivan Illich emphasised the necessity of vernacular capability and ‘tools’ for conviviality’, in the face of the supremacy of institutions of ‘professional’ knowledge, and mandatory participation in expert-determined services. Following Illich in this, we call the college a **college of conviviality**. We aim to develop (in due course, prototype) a generalisable model of such a college.
This practice here is conducted through a pod, and podding is at the heart of the practice of the college. Thus the work here is prototyping the work undertaken by ‘schools’ in the college, with their partners in coproduction.
Four zones of activist reach - Four faculties of the college of conviviality
The college has four faculties, one of which - the Faculty of care work - is the focus of the present pod. All the faculties are concerned with cultivating working **literacies** in activist practice. The faculty of care work engages with the literacies of . . - mobilising **in-here** material awareness and insight in activist living, in responding skilfully to in-heres, going on out-there . . - navigating and surfing the **aesthetic landscape** - the deep oceans and worldly winds of emotion, the heart-mind.
Conceptualising the dramatis personae, dynamics and skills, and relations of production in this material landcape is not easy. This makes it all the more important as a dimension of a transformational activist politics. Conditions - Framing the aesthetic landscape
This landscape of in-here forces and capabilities is the landscape of care work. Conditions - Care work - ‘In-here’
Like all the faculties, the faculty of care aims to achieve this primarily through the curating, stewarding and mobilising of **pattern language**, co-produced in pods with partner organisations making the living economy. There are many kinds of pattern language. This is a pattern language of **activist life**.
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