Fragments of anarchism in higher education critical art pedagogies

Higher Education (HE) continues to find itself subject to neoliberal doctrines of competition, standardisation, managerialism and marketisation. This paper presents selected findings from a grounded theory study in which creative arts practitioners working in HE institutions shared their understandings of the arts and the critical pedagogies inherent in their discipline within the context of a neoliberalised educational economy. The research shows that arts pedagogies and anarchist principles have similitude between them, with anarchist ideals directing and informing teaching practices through non-hierarchical modes of exchange, fluid approaches to teaching and co-operative learning practices in educational spaces. This perhaps indicates that despite the prevalence of neoliberal marketised governance infiltrating and influencing pedagogic practice in the arts there is still resistance to managerialist, stratified notions of education within this discipline.