“Pedagogical Factory”

Proposing radical pedagogies is at the heart of Chicago artist and educator Jim Duignan’s practice. Ten years ago, he founded the Stockyard Institute in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. Since that time, Duignan and his program have offered alternative concepts for shaping the learning experiences of youths living in the shadowed zones of Chicagoland. The venerable Hyde Park Art Center—still getting comfortable within the new walls of its retrofitted factory building—has a long-standing commitment to arts education, making it a smart amplifier of Duignan’s efforts. “Pedagogical Factory,” a decentered, porous, and provisional project organized by the Stockyard Institute with participation from numerous arts and arts-activist groups (including Philadelphia’s Think Tank, Brooklyn’s Center for Urban Pedagogy, Chicago’s Mess Hall, and Denmark’s Rum 46), has the physical appearance of a teen drop-in center. An overhead garage door opens up onto the street. A bike leans up against the green and black walls. An eighteen-foot-square chalkboard maps out the weekly events, while an improvised plywood “mini school,” replete with computers and engaged visiting artists, give a locus and a pulse to this educational stockroom. “Exhibited Proposals,” which predominantly take the form of posters, booklets, readers, and archives, anchor the display component of this hybrid think tank. This “factory” opens a network of fissures in the conventional framework of educational inquiry while arousing new modes of artistic practice.