2019-ongoing
School of Equals is a trajectory initiated by Sarah Késenne and Stijn Van Dorpe at LUCA School of Arts, taking equality within art education as a starting point for research and artistic interventions. It began with a reader and a seminar at LUCA, and led to a long-term collaboration with the school’s cleaning staff under the title Schoolmaken schoonmaken.
School of Equals
The reader -available (2021)
https://www.rile.space/books/school-of-equals
The seminar (2021–2026)
In collaboration with, among others, Sepake Angiama, Byron Kalomamas, Mahmoud Tarek, Lou Cocky Valentino, Elien Ronse, Guy Woueté and damdam.
Schoolmaken schoonmaken (ongoing)
Sarah Késenne and Stijn Van Dorpe, both teachers at LUCA School of Arts, initiated a small-scale trajectory with the campus cleaning staff. By joining several early-morning shifts, they gained insight into the realities of outsourced cleaning work, from fragmented communication and heavy workloads to the pressure of inspections and chronic understaffing.
They approached cleaning not as peripheral labour, but as essential to the functioning of the school and to artistic practice itself. This led them to write about working conditions, raise concerns with management, organise a screening of Le Balai Libéré for students, and bring cleaners, students, staff and teachers together for collective breakfasts. They also developed together with Hana Miletic an exhibition centred on cleaning and care.
Also two assemblies took place, bringing together cleaners, students, teachers, staff, management, SAAMO and trade union members to collectively address the issues raised. Throughout the process, they focused on creating spaces for dialogue shaped by the workers’ needs, while acknowledging time constraints, language barriers and differing contexts.
https://www.collateral-journal.com/index.php?cluster=42
