FOGO ISLAND DE-CENTRALIZED ACADEMY
community engagement / place-based research / architecture / educational programming
2014, Fogo Island in Newfoundland, Canada
Fogo Island is the largest of the offshore islands of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The remote island is about 16 miles long and 8.7 miles wide and with a population of approximately 2200 people spread throughout a number of small towns and unincorporated areas. The people of Fogo Island have traditionally supported themselves on fishing and it wasn’t until the late 20th century when the pressures of globalization, technology, and a changing economy began to shift the long-held traditions of daily island life.
RESEARCH
In January 2014, I was selected by Fogo Island Arts to participate in a residency dedicated for an artist educator. I split the six month residency into two distinct phases. The first provided for a period of research during which I became immersed into the practices of everyday life that sustain this remote corner of Newfoundland. During this time I hiked the island’s terrain, drank tea with locals, learned history, learned of fishing practices and architecture, cooked and ate a lot of cod, and screened an important collection of films by the National Film Board of Canada that familiarized me with the “Fogo Process” by which the self-sustaining community moved towards a cooperative model. Along with this research, I combed archival documents of esteemed architect, Cedric Price, on his mobile learning environment, the Potteries Thinkbelt, in England. During this time, I gained an understanding of how the island’s school system became centralized; in fact, ten coastal schools had recently been consolidated into one. My project, The Fogo Island Decentralized Academy begins with the question: What is lost when the island’s learning environment is moved inland, away from the ocean which informs not only its economy, but the entire livelihood and culture?
DESIGN/BUILD
Following the research phase and a 3-month development phase off the island, I returned in late summer 2014 to realize a socially engaged and education-based project in the form of a mobile schoolhouse. I used heritage structures and vocabulary to initiate a youth driven conversation about recent shifts in economy and culture on Fogo Island, and the role of art and architecture in those shifts. Youth learned of similar global initiatives (that use art and architecture to stimulate dialog) and were encouraged to strategize their own designs for growing (or slowing) the economy of the island. Together the students and I designed a small building and developed its conceptual purpose. Our hybrid design nodded to the vernacular of a traditional school house, blended with the colors and materials of new island architecture. We worked with a local builder to construct a robust wooden schoolhouse that could be moved according to local custom called “house launching”, by which traditionally a building is moved using pulleys or a drag-and-pull method or by rolling it over logs.
The Fogo Island De-Centralized Academy (FIDA) was designed as a socially / physically / geographically central place for conversation, critical thinking and invention. As a mobile project, it aimed to physically connect disparate communities and the central school while catalyzing the individual community members it sought to bring together. In creating a platform where people of all ages can engage with the changes taking place on the island, contribute to moments of shared learning and consider their community in a global context.
PERFORMANCE/PEDAGOGY
With the schoolhouse complete, it was ready to launch. On October 11, 2014, locals gathered to move the building from the Fogo Central Academy (the one school on the island) to the local Partridgeberry Festival. Over two days, the schoolhouse was activated by pedagogical activities that I designed. To engage community memory, I placed maps of each community on tables surrounding FIDA and asked visitors to mark the location and path of houses that had moved around the island. Meanwhile, children were given “obsolete” fishing gear such as pulleys and used nets and, through playful activity, tasked with imagining new uses.
AFTERMATH
FIDA was conceived of as a tool for alternative pedagogy, a structure to be used by the community according to its needs. A space for learning outside the classroom and to engage the evolving changes on the island. Fogo Islands Arts and is available for loan to local groups. Meanwhile FIDA serves as a model for how I might like to work in remote communities to design pedagogical experiences that are relevant and reflective of their unique circumstances.