I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing my peers and the conversations we had.
Rather than confirming my preconceptions, they pushed me to think more carefully about structure, authorship, moderation, and responsibility in educational and digital spaces. I also recognised my own inexperience as an interviewer, but this iterative learning process ultimately strengthened my research skills and reflexivity.
I am aware that although my initial plan of creating an online resource had to be limited in its depth, I am
What initially felt like a research into the open-source sharing and “alternative education” gradually forced me to confront my own assumptions, blind spots and my own tendencies to overcomplicate things.
Although entirely unintentional, I only realised afterwards that everyone I interviewed are the same generation: we all graduated between 2015 and 2018 and haven’t done an MA Fine Art but are all really interested in education and teaching.
I wonder if it is this ‘millennial’ perception of the changing nature of the internet and financialisation of Higher Education has shaped how we think?
I know that my very millennial attachment to the early internet – the sense of it as a space of sharing, experimentation and collective learning.
However, Through the process of talking to my peers I have become much more aware of how much that space has shifted through the process of enshittification (Foale K 2025) into something far more commercial, surveilled and extractive. Rather than becoming cynical, this realisation has made me more attentive to the ethics of how and why we share knowledge.
It is now explicit to me how knowledge-sharing is a relational and political act.
It has been a complete transition in perception the from ‘utopian’ online spaces of sharing as teenagers, to a commercialised transactional one as adults.
“DIY Culture … keep it nimble” Muhammad Z
I receive education by proxy as an educator
I think my absolute favourite piece of advice from this process that will guide me into the future is:
“( think of ) Teaching as a gift or an object as a gift or a piece of information as a gift. It’s not only what happens in that moment, but what people go on to share about the information they (have) received.” Oretha S