One of the results of the Infra-demos’ collaboration with the Solidarity Schools Network has been the development of an interactive platform which will visualize the ecosystem of the solidarity schools. This implies not only a presentation of quantitative and qualitative information about each school, but also other actors and agents which facilitate the solidarity schools’ operation, or, the later mobilize.
 
The development of the platform (still ongoing) follows a participation action research and co-design methodology. The initial discussion of the proposal for such mapping in the coordinating assemblies of the solidarity schools was followed by a first round of data collection. During these interviews the issue that arose was ‘what is the best way’ to represent the solidarity schools network according to its decentralized logic and principles? The deliberation, comments and suggestions that made informed the platform’s design and layout.
 
The resulted interactive map shows thus the span of the schools social relations and the reach of their transformative practices. It also provides an initial glimpse into their social infrastructural capacities which transcends a net pedagogical perspective as the network expands in various scales and fields; from the local to the international and from meeting educational needs to nurturing structures and processes of education communities (and education) as ‘expanding commons’ (Stavrides, 2017).
 
On Saturday 16/03/2019 a ‘draft’ version of the platform was presented for first time (photos) and for deliberation to the teachers, students, parents and volunteers who participated in the assembly of the ‘Mesopotamia’ Solidarity School, in Moschato - Athens. The event initiated a new round of co-design meetings for feedback towards the final formation of the platform. 
 
The public launch of the platform, in both Greek and English, will take place in the first public event that the Solidarity Schools’ Network organize for this year next Friday, 12 April 2019, in Thessaloniki. It forms part of the presentation of the expanded Solidarity Schools’ Network which organizes a round of public events and meetings until the end of the current academic year, starting from two-day events in Thessaloniki on 12 & 13 of April, which will be followed by two more public events, in Corfu and Athens in June.
 
 
References
 
Stavrides St. (2016) Common Space: The City as Commons. London. Zed Books
 

infra-demos PI just published a new article on Airbnbization of Europe, Mobility and Property.

infra-demos is presented on Nov 9th in the international workshop on infrastructures and mobility organised by the Catalan Institute of Anthropology and the University of Barcelona in Barcelona.

For more information follow the link

A new article by Dimitris Dalakoglou and Yannis Kallianos of infra-demos team was published in the journal Political Geography. The article titled: 'Eating mountains' and 'eating each other'' and it  talks about the relationship between political imaginary and infrastructures in Greece since the 1990s. 

The article is available to be downloaded for free for 50 days following this link 

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Professor Dimitris Dalakoglou, infra-demos' PI,  just got published an op-ed in the Dutch daily newspaper het Parool on the commercialization of urban real estate and its impact infrastructures and public interest.

The full article is available here

The Solidarity Schools in Greece were create in the context of the crisis to counter the acute increase of inequalities in education. At the same time, they have been laboratories of self-organised educational structures and practices integrated in the broader solidarity networks as autonomous learning communities. By putting democracy and mutualism at the core of their organizational function and educational practices they renegotiate the ways in which communities of education and knowledge production and sharing liaise with their communities.
This weekend they convene for first time in a two-day meeting in order to “further our democratic way of operating… to deconstruct the teacher-centered way of understanding education and learning and to construct the visionary frame of decentralized, autonomous and non-hierarchical educational communities”, as they state. In that way they aim “to cultivate a cohesive visionary frame for our role, to better describe our goals, to highlight and empower «good» practices on the educational spectrum… to defend education as a common good, to continue to reclaim by creating!
The program of the meeting includes sessions and workshops on solidarity schools as communities of participatory action and democracy, on their relation with the social and solidarity economy and the commons, on social pedagogy and communities of learning, on interculturalism and the education of immigrants and refugees, on gender identity in/and education. It must also be noted that the meeting aspires to connect with analogous experiences from outside Greece. To this aim collectives, educationalists and researchers from Italy, Switzerland, France, UK, Turkey and Germany will also take part in the meetings.

Infra-demos, has been part of the organizing group of the two-day meeting and facilitates the session on the relation between the solidarity schools the solidarity economies and the commons. The session will develop in two axes. Firstly, drawing by the experience of the solidarity schools will attempt to show the different perception that they cultivate for economic relations and transactions, which are based on use value through practices of mutualism and free exchange. The second focus will be on the relationship of the solidarity school with their local communities and the existing municipal framework, in order to work out institutional formats and changes that need to be achieved in order autonomous educational communities to be feasible.

For those interested you can find more in the following address: http://meeting.solidarityschools.gr/en/