Time frame for Conferencival: June 16th-19th 2016.

The alternative education is the field, where we can cultivate answers for a number of actual questions connected with education and development of the youngsters and where possible tendencies of education development start. That is why it is so important to comprehend existing alternatives and to find the support for non-government initiatives who embody these alternatives. The International Conference on the Alternative Education aims to support such initiatives, providing the public space if dialog on the education which is so important nowadays during uneasy changes time.

Every year our conference becomes the place for discussion on oncoming perspectives of the education, comprehend different non-government initiatives. It also becomes a place of a friendly and concerned meeting of the practice and the research.

We decided to estrange from the traditional genre of the conference, as we did in previous years, and to convert it to a mini-festival, which includes different events, genres and participants. It would be neither conference nor festival; we decided to name it “Conferentival”.

This year the genre of festival is very appropriate, because we decided to make the pedagogy of art, theatrical pedagogy and events in the education the main topics of the conference. That is a perfect reason to hold a small festival!

This year we are going to investigate, show and discuss different things which are so difficult to formalize:

• pedagogical opportunities of art (theatre, cinema, fine art, etc) in the development of feelings and the mode of thoughts;
• the art of possibility in pedagogy (the capacity to help, support, develop in situations which look desperate);
• the pedagogy as the art.

Within the Conferencival we are going to speak about the pedagogy of the events, living through, about the pedagogy of the personal creative act and improvisation which deals with the integral world image and “I”-image in aesthetic, ethic and intellectual perception. The main idea of all the pedagogy of art (and theatrical pedagogy as well) is the creation of the open artistic environment, special organization of the space of the imaginary exploration of the world and one’s own personality through the meanings of the art. This environment contains something that cause the moving towards the image: it is always the environment that asks and sets problems.The function of the teacher who initiates this environment is to make these questions and problems the most clear for all the participants of the event. However, the teacher shouldn’t consider himself as a source of the right answer, because every time he looks for the new living understanding. Such environment sets the infinite chain of questions and, by the way, the infinite educational process.

Nowadays in the epoch of the informational superfluity we see the necessity of the returning to the meaning and to such pedagogy which helps a youngster to understand the world, the meaning of the events set in this world, helps its personality becoming and development.

But what does “help someone personality development” mean? How can we measure if the teacher has worked today for this development? What the educational arrangement should be look like and what is the specialty of the space where this process is taking place? To answer these questions we should remember that in Russian tradition (within cultural and historical psychology of L. Vygotsky and activity approach of A. Leontiev) states the personality through the system of ethical choices. So what environment can help a teenager to get an experience of the independent axiological choice and support him in this difficult experience of personal identity? It is clear that it’s impossible to influence directly someone’s personal becoming and development, that’s why we are talking about the creation of the specific a creative educational atmosphere as the environment of the personality becoming. This environment includes the number of possibilities which are essential for the personality development. We believe that the pedagogy of art is the very important concept for understanding of this space. It has existed for a long time already, but it still doesn’t have the proper definition. People often call that everything which takes place during lessons of art (drawing, music, World Culture, theatre, etc) We are going not to speak about the content area of the educational field “the art”, but about the practice of living through (the term of the theatrical pedagogy) the educational content in all the subject fields basing on the integral image thinking. So in such approach we consider the art not as the topic but as the way of human being as a HUMAN.

Within the Conferencival we suggest you to think about the following questions and to share your experience in the following fields: How can teachers work with the child’s personality? Through the art? Through the support of his/her existential choice? Through the mutual creation? Or somehow else? In what pedagogical practices can we organise the cooperation with teenagers “here and now”, when feeling together and living through together become the most important thing? What is the function of the pedagogy of art in the modern school? What gives us an opportunity to determine pedagogy as an art? What art laws are actual to pedagogic? A teacher and an actor, circus performer, artist, musician, producer – do they have something in common?

On our Conferencival we welcome :

• specialists in theatrical pedagogy, probably with the part of their ensembles, with their mini-performances and workshops;
• modern museums managers (in particular interactive), exhibitions and cultural spaces managers who deals with the pedagogy and art, probably with the parts of their exhibits;
• teachers and artists who deals with the inclusive education and the way of living, in particular with the help of art;
• artists and musicians who can help their pupils to explore their personality by involving them into the creation;
• lecturers in pedagogics and researches who determine the pedagogical job as the creation and pedagogy as the art genre and can prove and show it;
• and all those people who organizes meetings with artists, meeting with ourselves, when the “personal meaning” appears which is essential for personality development.

Our Conferentival may include roundtables, theatre performances, debates, panel reports, exhibitions and poster presentation, workshops, presentations, project sessions… (your ideas and proposals are welcome!) Participants of these events will be able to present their experience, meet the colleagues practice, study it together, discuss common perspective and find companions for further projects.

The Conference Organising Committee:

Tatiana ANTTILA, Edutainment ry, chairman of the board, Helsinki, Finland
Dmitrijs VINOGRADOVS, The International Association of Experts in Children Education on High Technologies, Rīga, Latvia
Olga IVANOVA, Ph.D., assistant professor in mass communication languages department UrFU named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin, the member of the Regional Artistic Expert Council on National Artistic Trades of Sverdlovskaya region, Ekaterinburg, Russia
Elena KAZAKOVA, professor, Ph.D., the headmaster of Pre-university Education Institute, Saint Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia
Natalia KASITSINA, «Janusz Korczak Open Original Alternative Education Institute», psychologist, manager-consultant, St Petersburg, Russia
Tintti KARPPINEN, vice-chairman of Theatrical Pedagogues Association, Helsinki, Finland
Tatiana KLIMOVA, senior lecturer in Aesthetic Education and Culturology department Moscow Institute of Open Education, researcher at Federal Institute of Education Development, Moscow, Russia
Sergey MIKHELSON, mathematics teacher at LREI Shcool, New York, USA
Stanislav SKIBINSKY, Ph.D., president of the European Janusz Korczak Academy, Munich, Germany
Valery PUZIREVSKY, Ph.D., «Janusz Korczak Open Original Alternative Education Institute», St Petersburg, Russia
Andrey RUSAKOV, director of Educational Cooperation Agency, St Petersburg, Russia
Lev FRADKIN, executive director at Educational Centre “Uchastie”, St. Petersburg, Russia
Anatoly SHPERKH, expert of the program “School league ROSNANO”
Mikhail EPSHTEIN, Ph.D., project manager of «Janusz Korczak Open Original Alternative Education Institute», St. Petersburg, Russia