SELF EVALUATION REPORT along the 6 standards prescribed by the The Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO).
Note: the chapters of this text about the DAI are to be separated from each other and will be inserted in a collective Self-Evaluation Report, again along the required standards of the NVAO, as part of the Master of Fine Art and Design Degree Accreditation 2025. This formal accreditation concerns not only DAI but also the MA-programmes Werkplaats Typografie and Critical Fashion Practices, all three of us operating under the umbrella of the ArtEZ University of the Arts.
WHO ARE WE LOOKING AT
The Dutch Art Institute a.k.a. DAI Art Praxis, a.k.a. DAI Roaming Academy, in short DAI, functions as a permaculture in which 'studying together' and 'living together' are inextricably linked and a rich variety of praxes at the intersections of contemporary art and theory can grow and sustain each other. Thinking, writing, voicing, performing, making, organizing, curating and publishing are invigorated through fluid configurations of collective study. DAI critically positions itself within the versatile and porous domain of 'contemporary art': its discourses and its discontents on a planetary level.
Standard 1: INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES
Apart from the obvious degrees in visual arts, students joining the DAI also come with backgrounds in theory, science, sound, theatre, writing, spoken word, architecture, cinema, dance, choreography, design or other relevant disciplines; at DAI we all come together to study and investigate what "contemporary art" this most un-disciplined of disciplines, can do. The desire to question or even subvert the disciplinary standards of the professional field have led the programme away from strictly educational affiliations towards the consistent integration of art collectives and institutions, professionally operating at the forefront of artistic and intellectual inquiry, context, production, presentation and distribution. Since 2006 workfield affiliates have been invited to curate crucial parts of our programme in the so-called COOP study groups (Curriculum Component B positioned in conjunction with the DAI's three other distinctive Curriculum Components, all described under the next Standard). In the running academic year our main partners are: Archive Ensemble (Berlin, Dakar, Milan, Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), De Appel Amsterdam, Hosting Lands (Copenhagen), If I Can't Dance I Don't want to Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam), Neringa Forest Architecture (Nida) and SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin). We feel very privileged to be able to work with their precise knowledges, skills, experiences and networks. From our part their commitment to speculative, transversal processes with unknown outcome (in academia perhaps only similar to the study of physics) is requested. DAI postulates that through the flow of intense encounters, carefully structured in a rich variety of formats of assembling and intra-action, students are equiped with the skills and networks to curate their own position and to make their own (individual or collective) claims in the international professional field. The DAI community understands 'study' as a practice of freedom (as coined by bell hooks) and 'art' as a space where the poetical and the political can merge in unexpected and transformative ways.
What our students wrote in 2019 when asked about the relation between the content of the program and the Intended Learning Outcomes is still relevant in 2025 (albeit of course with the infusion of fresh topics and new research trajectories): "the students of DAI are enabled to become aware members of the artworld, who neither buy into the genius myth nor commodity fetish. As such, DAI's contents do not resolve around an actual piece of artwork, like in other studio-based MFA’s. The content is as rich as critical thought itself, reaching from the Frankfurt school to anti-colonial theory and poetry, from cybernetics and science-fiction to Afrofuturism, from ancient myths to early-modern philosophy up to current economical and ecological injustice. No specific content could prepare one to achieve the DAI’s learning intentions, but all of them are forcing the students to rethink modes of production, articulation and even living."
Critical reflection
Collaborative research infused by individual contributions, with this prompt DAI invites its partners to curate a COOP study group (to be fully embedded in the totality of the program). In addition we offer extensive guidelines to the tutorial COOP teams landing within our educational environment. It sometimes occurs that a partner's focus on great and important content-based research, comes with an understimation of the importance of pedagogy. How to coach the tensions between demanding students and professional art institutions who are aimed at positioning themselves in relation to the public (and political) arena, and thus not always naturally equiped with the skills to navigate the classroom setting? DAI as convener of this most valuable exchange must continuously develop its capacities as coach and moderator under changing conditions, a task that in our specific context comes with demands that are not necessarily provided by the pedagogical textbook. Since a couple of years DAI has inaugurated the WEAVER team, which consists of the Head of Program, the Study Trajectory Coach/WEAVER education leader, the COOP education leader and the HTDTWT research curator. Together they support students, individual tutors and the tutorial teams delegated by our partners. The WEAVER team helps them to navigate the Education and Exam Regulations and plays a crucial role in keeping track of the Intended Learning Outcomes, flagging eventual omissions or outdated formulations. The WEAVER team is responsible for the annual renewal, publication, introduction of the Syllabus and it's smooth integration in the demanding roaming framework of the Dutch Art Institute.
Standard 2: Educational learning environment
DAI invites its students to engage with four independent (of each other) curriculum components. Each of them with its own organizational format and distinctive aims, outcomes, assessments and credits. First and second year students are required to take part in all four of them and the two generations will study together during all DAI Confluences, albeit with slight differences in the division of workload. These are mainly caused by the finalization of the written master thesis towards the end of the second year. During Confluence#1 the first year students are introduced to the design of the 4 pillars which are to constitute the 'architecture' of our school without a building:
A) How To Do things With Theory
is the curriculum component that offers latitude to DAI. While theory is always and everywhere present at DAI, challenging and nurturing all our artistic and other research activities, here, in a variety of ways, critical theory is categorically fostered.
B) COOP study groups
are at the heart of the program. Curated by DAI's educational partners (invited international art institutions and collectives), they bring makers, researchers, writers, organizers and curators together around well-defined, relevant questions and topics. All are called to active participation in strictly collaborative, de-disciplined, art research trajectories with a one year learning curve, leading up to the annual final group presentation during the COOP SUMMIT.
C) Kitchen ACTS
ask the student to present and activate their research in a performative context, while offering a sheltered, relatively ‘free' space, entirely independent from the tutor-led curriculum components A and B. For the duration of twenty uninterrupted minutes the student presenter is invited to ‘speak’ to an audience consisting of all their fellow students, two or three changing, invited respondents, DAI’s artistic director, the AEROPONIC ACTS curator, as well as the public (particularly during the AEROPONIC ACTS at the end of the two year trajectory).
D) WEAVER
as a curriculum component aims to offer students a variety of of pathways (student led or program led) wherein their responsibility and agency towards their own study progress and learning trajectory or towards the DAI’s modus operandi as a cultural actor in the world can be furthered.
A), B) and C) come with clear assignements and core characteristics, while D) is intended as a winding support structure, an assemblage of student led courses and gatherings, HTCTWR (our Food Lab), the Roaming Assembly and the LIFE AFTER DAI coaching sessions, all of these topped off with the requested self-reflection of the student by means of 8 WEAVER reports, to be delivered over the course of two years. Curriculum component WEAVER is crucial to counter and complement the conceptual rigor of the other 3 components, with a needs based program that allows for continuous adaption to the changing conditions of the Roaming Academy.
In the Syllabus our students find descriptions of the formal aspects as well as of the annually changing, curated content of these four defining curriculum components.
DAI's learning environment is, it goes without words, also acutely defined by its modus operandi as Roaming Academy. Without a permanent home, students and tutors congregate seven times per year at different places throughout Europe (and beyond) to study and briefly live together. Apart from the theory tutors and the structural partner institution's tutorial teams, who follow us on our journey to the annual seven destinations, we are also always finding like-minded partners on location, with whom we are weaving an international network, an archipelago of distinct localities and initiatives, each with their own rhythms and objectives. During the Confluences we exchange research and time in the spirit of generosity, we hold space, generate energy and build the community to come. The unflagging queering spirit shared by generations of students, alumni and tutors has emboldened our program to break out of the confinement of the neo-liberal university, to literally become the 'soft spaceship' that invites students and tutors on a metamorphic journey; on an education that can dance and sing wherever it lands and is welcomed by friends.
Any learning environment is marked by the characterics of its most important inhabitants: the students. Now more than ever the DAI seeks to bring together a plurivocal band of great people whom we believe will be able to connect with each other in an interesting, deep way through shared sensibilities, struggles and solidarities, rather than disciplining similarities.
Since our last accreditation DAI has seen a remarkable increase in both number and quality of applications, including a growing interest from prospective students whose career is already quite advanced, wishing to join DAI to anchor their praxes more profoundly within international art discourses. We have even welcomed our first former (guest) tutors, returning to the programme as enrolled students! In general we observe that the level of previous educational experiences is increasing; we even receive applications from practioners who already obtained a PhD or have been in residence at post graduate programs. Analysing this development we have come to believe that there is a strong connection with the waning of the hegemony of British universities. For many years thinking and theorizing in progressive international art and art education was heavily influenced by few groundbreaking, excellent London based programmes. In recent years, neo-liberal power grabs at board and managerial levels at formerly outstanding institutions such as Goldsmiths coupled with crippling bureaucratisation and standardisation, insane rise of tuition fees, also for nationals, and ongoing budget cuts have resulted in the forced merger of formerly independent headstrong departments into large, now centrally steered, homogenized units. Increasingly, scholars and students turn their back to the UK and search for alternative, more stimulating research environments, safer spaces of intellectual and artistic belonging, regardless of their graduate or post-graduate status. Those who knock at DAI's doors have often found us through word-of-mouth. We are humbled to receive jubilant, highly DAI-specific letters of recommendation from all over the world. It is thus encouraging as well as binding to see that our politically outspoken profile attracts a growing number of artists and researchers who are eager to subscribe to our anti-fascist stances. Stances which are clearly reflected in our Manifesto and subtly woven into all aspects of our Syllabus as well as our Admissions trajectory.
Critical reflection
DAI positions itself as a left-leaning program with a feminist, intersectional, anti-capitalist and anti-colonial orientation. This is of course easy said, but much harder to practice; DAI came into existence as (and continues to be) an integral part of the Dutch/European cultural and educational fabric. As described above, DAI is at this point, still alluring to international art students (and, not to forget (!) also to young Dutch practitioners who see DAI as a way to catapult themselves into the, by nature, fundamentally international work field). However: internationalism, as we all know, is under attack in the Netherlands. Already struggling since 2008 with the seemingly unstoppable rise of tuition fees for our non-European passport holding students and the unethical consequences thereoff for equality in the classroom, the current Dutch Governement's cooked up hostility towards academia and the cultural field in general, as well as the explicit hostility towards international, in particular racialised students and tutors may soon have their devastating effects on the DAI community. Our critical reflection is that we are not (yet) properly prepared. How to resist these attacks and how to protect our brilliant, but often also vulnerable students and tutors ?
Standard 3: ASSESSMENT
While DAI over the years has always fulfilled the requirement of the Central Exam Committee (CEC) to annually deliver a concise testing plan for the Education & Exam Regulations (EER) and to live up to its promises, we strongly feel that at the beginning of the academic year 2024-2025 we have entered a phase of transformation where the old is dying but the new cannot yet be born. At the level of staffing we are currently training two new BKE examiners, while Nikos Doulos (already in the possesion of a BKE certificate) is gradually stepping in (and immediately also re-creating) the role shaped over nearly 20 years by Rik Fernhout, who served as DAI's examination leader, liaising between DAI and the CEC. Last summer Rik sadly passed away, and we found ourselves confronted with a modus operandi that is in need of rethinking at the level of DAI itself as well as at the level of the CEC and its functioning within the ArtEZ University of the Arts. In real life practice DAI has developed its particular ways of assessing to what degree the intended learning outcomes have been achieved in each DAI student's individual case - but we desire to match this practice with a proper written and theorized document that can serve as a stimulating tool for continuous experimentation with 'testing' in an environment where the artwork as commodity barely exists and 'process' is valued far above 'result' or achievement in a competetive way. DAI wishes to formalise what it has developed over many years without casting it in a mold that cannot meander with the continuous flow of insights. To our excitement recently, at the beginning of 2025, a brandnew Programme Assessment Policy has been published on the ArtEZ website. It offers us exactly what we craved: a crystal clear overview of the WHW's requirements combined with a strong encouragement to develop testing programs in true synergy with innovative curricula.
For the EER 2025-2026 we have made a first inventory of our organically developed modus operandi in regard to feedback and assessment ~ we have included the link to show that we are moving forward from the text in the EER 2024-2025, with the clear ambition to continue exploring new wording and new terminologies for the EER 2026-2027. It is our aim to develop a DAI specific Assessment Policy (in line, it goes without words with the legally binding Dutch "Higher Education and Research Act", the so-called WHW) that takes several questions of contemporary urgency in account (and here we are freely citing some which have been posed by esteemed colleague Dr. Henk Slager):
- the tensional relation between ethical reflection and evaluation
- data as profitable resource and higher education's politically unsafe Big Tech dependency vs generous and safe sharing of materials
- practices of collaborative study and assessment thereoff
- how to deal with AI
Meanwhile we are very proud of the new digital student information system that we ourselves, as DAI, have developed.
THE CARRIER BAG is a sub-division of our website, closely interlinked with all the program's educational content. CARRIER BAG pages contain the residue, the archive of each student's journey with the DAI: input and output. We've put a lot of effort in creating firmly protected, individual portfolios where we keep track of all things study in relation to a student's specific trajectory. We are still in the process of perfecting this fantastic tool which allows for a very precise follow up. It supports the ArtEZ bureaucracy as well as the DAI's archive (seen as a continuum). Students have viewing access to their own Carrier Bag, during their study, as well as after their graduation.
Due to the CARRIER BAG we are gaining valuable insights, by laying out all activities, from the part of the students as well as of the tutors and the overriding program, next to each other. This has already started to fuel new approaches to curriculum building, to assessment and to the creation of meaningful ways of giving feedback and of "testing".
Having real agency as educators over that process while being supported by ArtEZ on the level of WHW regulations, is our sole desire.
Critical reflection
At DAI there is always a relatively large group coined, in Dutch as "langstuderenden". Students who did not obtain enough points to earn their certificates within the framework of two years. We are aware that 14 travels (in the context of the Roaming Academy) within the timespan of two years can pose challenges in terms of time management. We do however refuse any claims in regard to the degree in which our curriculum would not be "studeerbaar" (studyable). It is a fact that ALL our graduates who are paying the higher tuition fee do manage to finalise the trajectory within the given time frame, so in principle this should be possible for everyone. For European passport holders taking more time to write their thesis (the extension in 98% of the cases concerns thesis writing) is often affordable and sometimes even profitable in terms of financial support. The challenge for DAI continues to be that we have to support and coach (online) a cohort that is no longer present during our Confluences.
Standard 4: ACHIEVED LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning outcomes become visible to all during
1) DAI's annual COOP SUMMIT, when the COOP study groups forge their collaborative research into an assemblage of public happenings at the 'focus' location of that academic year.
2) when the written thesis is handed in after the two-year trajectory with How To Do Things With Theory.
3) during the AEROPONIC ACTS, the final Kitchen presentations at the end of each student's two year study trajectory, when each 'act' is filmed and the resulting video registration, together with a report, authored by a guest writer, form an integral part of the Kitchen curriculum component and will be made public via the Alumni Embassy. AEROPONIC ACTS always take place in front of an audience, consisting of invited respondents, peers as well as the general public.
4) at our Alumni Embassy. Our alumni thrive, in many places and in many ways; as art workers at the intersections between theory, activism, research and art in all its hybridities, ambiguities, disguises, temporalities, forms, vernaculars and (para-) languages.
To begin with those whose monographies can be found on prestigious coffeetables: our Brazilian alumna Bárbara Wagner, who in partnership with Benjamin de Burca became quite famous as well as the late, much beloved Chiara Fumai who, after her sad passing became one of the art world's shining stars. Many more alumni have published books (some of them based on the thesis they wote for DAI). We mention just a few: Luca Carboni, Simon(e) van Saarloos, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Kristiina Koskentola and Bethany Crawford.
Some became directors: Hu Wei was director of the Institute for Provocation in Beijing, Eduardo Cachucho is Head at Pro Helvetia Johannesburg, previously Creative Director of Fak'ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival, Isabelle Sully is director of A Tale of A Tub in Rotterdam and Zoi Moutsoko was Director of Contemporary Art for the 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture. Martha Jager is a curator at the Vleeshal, Aziza Harmel is an internationally acknowledged curator (and currently also COOP tutor at DAI), others acquired positions in higher education: Prix de Rome nominees Lauren Alexander and Mercedes Azpilicueta are respectively Head of the BA in Graphic Design of the KABK in The Hague and Head of the TXT dept at the Rietveld Academy, while numerous other alumni are involved in higher education nationally and internationally, while Rana Hamadeh has actually won the Prix de Rome in 2017. Helen Zeru Araya and Assem Hendawi were awarded with Prince Claus Fund fellowships, Aarti Sunder with a Harvard fellowship and many more alumni won a myriad of prizes for videowork, performance, poetry, drag-tivism and so forth: Maya Watanabe, Pelumi Adejumo, Lou Lou Sainsbury, Marie Tučková, Marc Hörler, Taka Taka and the list could go on and on.
DAI keeps track and publishes an overview of the many alumni enrolled in Third Cycle residencies or PhD trajectories. The wealth of professional activities of our alumni is reflected on our website's homepage were we publish (a fraction) of the ongoing stream of announcements and invitations to shows, book launches, performances and lectures.
We are particulary pleased with those alumni who kept collaborating with each other in their 'Life after DAI', such as the succesfully emerging SOUPSPOON Collective which was formed in Rotterdam, summer 2022 by alumni Pitchaya Ngamcharoen (TH), Raffia Li (CN), Maoyi Qiu (CN), Miyoung Chang (KR) and Dakota Guo (CN).
DAI alumni in Third Cycle, PhD and other Post-Graduate research and fellowship programs.
Critical reflection
Between 2014 and 2021, DAI explored the potential of creating an experimental third-cycle para-institution alongside its MA program. As with regard to the ArtEZ professorships: DAI was never consulted on the appointment nor on the positioning of these professorships. Content wise there was no match and DAI never profited from any of the investments ArtEZ has made to develop and maintain the professorships. The research on third cycle level generated by DAI itself, was in fact entirely funded from the MA budget and could thus only exist in the margins of our program. Our alumni and several of our tutors kept showing great interest in the creation of a DAI-led Third Cycle platform. Meanwhile we sadly lost several highly qualified and beloved theory tutors to other academic environments where their qualities were better recognised by the executive boards of those institutions, who appointed them with professorships similar to the Dutch "lectoraten". The good news: for the current academic year DAI finally received additional funding from ArtEZ to build on the legacy of our earlier, unfunded and unsupported explorations. With the program APRiCot Garden 2025 we aim to strengthen the bonds between alumni and their roaming alma mater, demonstrating how educational institutions can foster knowledge communities that extend beyond but also feed back into formal academic structures. APRiCot Garden 2025 will culminate in a curated research conference-festival of one day at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam (Saturday 10 May, 2025) As critical reflection we ask: how to move forward from here ?
APRiCot Garden 2025: Research as Regenerative Practice
Standard 5: PROVISIONS
It will be obvious that as a Roaming Academy the DAI does not make use of the facilities on offer by the ArtEZ services that are exclusively available upon a student's presence in one the premises in Arnhem, Enschede or Zwolle. DAI is exempted from contributions to ArtEZ for housing and the use of the workshops. With the money that is saved we are enabled to cover part of the costs of organizing infrastructures on location. To our students we explain that not using the workshops in Arnhem is largely compensated by the unique, amazing programme of the Roaming Academy, whereby the focus lies more on exchange, networking and conviviality then on the production of objects.
Meanwhile we have developed alternative support structures which begin and end with our website. Here, prospective students embark on their journey with DAI. Here the workfield very regularly looks at the wealth of biographies at our Alumni Embassy and our Tutor Galaxy. Scholars visit our various archives ( the website offers multiple ways to access DAI's present and past). For students, tutors and crew the use value of the BULLETINS cannot be under-estimated. One BULLETIN contains the full program of a specific DAI Confluence. BULLETINS have been released on a monthly base since 2002 (with few omissions). Together they constitute a very complete archive based on the detailed schedules announcing DAI's educational activities as well as the day-to-day agenda of each Confluence. Over the years BULLETINS have thus carefully registered DAI's ongoing development: renewal through transformative processes of(un)learning, while exploring individual as well as collective methodologies of study and research and learning to take better care of our own and each other's needs while studying and living together at the Planetary Campus.
Attending our academy without a building and without fixed class rooms, let alone individual studio spaces, is only for intrinsically motivated students who are willing to deal with DAI's very specific and challenging working & living conditions. Our equally motivated crew is keen to help students navigate back and forth between their homebase and the 7 Confluences, but DAI's capacities and means are not without their limits. Incoming students will not find their beds made up for them... even though, we do cater for their bed & meals during all real life Confluences.
Despite the DAI's nomadic nature and the geographical dispersion of the members of its community, a strong and well maintained alumni-network has been established. DAI-artists are cautious to embrace the exclusive claims of the neo-liberal globalization project but they do share a fair-minded, critically attuned inclination towards anti-colonial internationalism, often leading them to places outside of the confinement of the hipster ghetto's in Art's comfort zones. We are proud to say that many of our alumni are highly motivated to cement their worldwide DAI-friendships. To support these networks we publish and maintain our Alumni Embassy.
Increasingly alumni are invited back on board to take up roles: as advisors to the Admissions Committee, as writers, as chefs, as communication designers, as fundraisers, co-ordinators, as curators, as facilitators, as filmmakers, as hosts of DAI Roaming Academy in their hometowns, as respondents to the Kitchen and as tutors to COOP study groups or otherwise. The future (of DAI) is in their hands.
The pride of our program is the, for the Netherlands quite unique DAI Friends & Alumni Grant; a one-off annual grant that is awarded to non-EU student/s in their second year of study at the Dutch Art Institute. It is funded by the generous donations from the DAI’s broader community and 100% initiated and organised by DAI alumni ! It is open to eligible and interested DAI students in their second year of study who bear financial burden and/or stress. Fundraising happens, amongst others by means of intergenerational public performance nights which bring many DAI alumni together in support of the youngest generation.
DAI Friends & Alumni Grant ~ for non-EU students
Critical reflection
The art world is notorious for its unsustainable attitude and culture regarding international travel. DAI as Roaming Academy must face this difficult reality of which we are a part - the debates regularly pop up. Among the DAI community, positions in regard to travel vary greatly and stand nearly aways in relation to the level of privilege from which people are speaking. Those who live in "peripheral" places, such as islands or deserts or other isolated parts of the world where there is no way to 'escape' over land, let alone by public transport, feel very different about the call to give up on flying and with that on the possibility of assembling internationally. In the current geo-political framework international collaboration and solidarity are desperately needed just as much as action for the climate and our planet. The DAI community takes these conflicting urgencies in account, for now without arriving at any unambiguous conclusion.
Critical reflection
DAI requires all students to travel to the locations where our Confluences happen to be accommodated. What we described above as "exciting and challenging" may come across to some as a highly ableist approach to education.
We are aware that there are all sorts of visible and invisible barriers that prevent some prospective students from walking through our imaginary doors, even though joining the program would make so much sense for them! We are dedicated to work towards identifying and removing these barriers and we warmly welcome any suggestions.
Diversity is not only in who is selected, it is also reflected in who is a part of the review process as well as in how DAI-practioners are supported after leaving our program. There is still a world to gain in this respect, but with the help of the 'experts by experience' within our community, we are committed to perform better.
Standard 6: QUALITY ASSURANCE
DAI wishes to act and relate with open-mindedness and self-criticality. We try to be responsive to issues and questions, and we actively seek to orientate our management towards flexibility and transformation. We achieve this through a variety of formats.
- Constant influx of voices from 'outside':
During every Confluence, Curriculum Component C invites changing international guest tutors who not only respond to presentations by the students but are also invited to reflect on the format and approach of the program. Curriculum Component B is entirely curated and tutored by invited partner institutions thus guaranteeing an ongoing conversation about the relevance of DAI's modus operandi for the international professional field.
- Each curricular unit is led by a core member of what we call the WEAVER-team (this includes the Head of Program). Thus tutors during every Confluence, are offered ample time and a willing ear, to discuss the educational process as well as the logistical and practical challenges of the Roaming Academy.
- Each first year student's face to face conversation-of-one-hour with DAI's artistic director & head of program, serves as a focussed moment for sharing musings, questions, concerns, and proposals relating to art, life, research, study & DAI (in any desired configuration). These conversations play an important role in decision making. As much as possible the head of program tries to avoid a culture of majority building through voting, instead DAI aims to sensibly deal with contradictions and minority positions. This is not always easy or even possible. But as a principle it is at the very heart of our program.
- The DAI student body organizes their own student-led independent platform for critical evaluation of the program in the form of the General Assembly, a gathering facilitated (but not attended) by the DAI crew within the time frame of the confluences.
- The DAI's so-called COUNCIL acts as a valve between the student body and DAI crew in the management and delivery of the program's curriculum at large, including exam regulations and module requirements. Members ( elected students who are receiving a financial compensation for their labour) meet IRL during most of the DAI Confluences and then again online with the head of program to report on and discuss the development of the curriculum, and to raise concerns, comments and suggestions brought forward by the student body. The COUNCIL is thus an assembly of student "consultants", thinking together with the head of program (regularly joined by another WEAVER team member or facilitating crew member) about all things DAI. While the COUNCIL is organically focused on the now experience of the DAI student body, it also and importantly acts as a think tank - to reflect on the past and look towards how DAI will be shaped in the (near) future (when current students may have already left the program). DAI cherishes and values the intergenerational care of our students andalumni: over the years the COUNCIL has played a crucial role as a place for discussion, action and above all imagination ~ to collaboratively shape and reshape the thing called DAI.
Critical reflection
The chain of political, social and ecological disasters of the past 6 years has thrown an entire generation into (latent) depression. We increasingly experience this in the classroom: students deeply distrust or even detest all things 'institutional'. The deafening silence of most Western universities and academies in regard to the epistemicide and physical destruction of all universities in Gaza has shaken our students (and tutors) to the core. DAI has chosen to stand in solidarity with them and to open ample space within the curriculum for institutionally curated as well as student led Palestine Teach Outs. Students do need the trust and backing of institutions when they begin to translate their visions into real life action towards a better world. But on the longer term solidarity and support alone are not enough.The despair of this generation about the loss of a future before it has even begun, will influence everything we as educators will be facing in the years to come. Years that are going to be tough, beyond any doubt. The question is if we are prepared for the existential and ethical challenges, which the safety of ever more bureaucracy and ever more control can never resolve.
