After Summer School 2024 with the New Academy of the Nieuwe Instituut

The After Summer School organised by Nieuwe Instituut is planned to take place from 30 September to 4 October 2024 and introduce a new Bauhaus of the Seas Sails drop Living with water.

The school is initiated by The New Academy, a collaboration between the Nieuwe Instituut and philosopher Rosi Braidotti. Together with different bottom-up, activist, cultural and archival organisations in Rotterdam, The New Academy develops a curriculum based on the concept of the ‘distributed university’, which assumes that knowledge is produced in a variety of locations and through many different subjects – not for profit and by the people – and acknowledges the distributed nature of knowledge production within the contemporary social system.

During the After Summer School, a wide variety of knowledge producers will teach their methods on how to change the city by looking, listening, writing, archiving, collaborating, activating, researching, designing, and walking differently. Over 20 public classes will take place throughout the city, presenting Rotterdam as a hub for knowledge that deserves to be recognized and included in the city development.

In this context, the New Academy has also teamed up with Studio Makkink & Bey and their WaterSchool, a self-initiated design research project that seeks to redefine education by placing water at its core.

One of the Bauhaus of the Seas Sails drops – Living with Water – is in fact derived from the dynamics in the MerweVierhaven area in the west of Rotterdam where the WaterSchool is based, though for the curriculum, a public classroom is developed in The Park, around an old sanatorium built in the area: a healing site where sources of fresh and brackish water come together.

The Living with Water drop will make use of different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing coming from humans and non-humans: designers and fishers, gardeners and beer brewers, biologists and chefs. The drop will be introduced during the kick-off of the curriculum in the After Summer School and will run throughout the following years. 

For more information about the After Summer School and the New Academy click here.

Project image New Academy / After Summer School 2024. Graphic design: Cengiz Mengüç.