Another world is possible - and you don't have to be an entrepreneur to create it.

Keywords: Project-based learning, entrepreneurship, mutual aid, solidarity economies
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 61

Abstract

For the past 6 years my colleague and I have been studying student entrepreneurship programs at our university. While some students do truly want to be silicon valley-style entrepreneurs, many others are in fact looking for ways to escape the world of meaningless work and to assert creative agency in their lives; entrepreneurship just seems - or is sold to them as - the best available option. That said, even for those of us for whom venture investor-oriented entrepreneurship is not necessarily the best or chosen path towards creating other possible worlds, there are lessons to be culled from entrepreneurship education - which often excites and energizes the students involved. How then, might we twist some of these pedagogical models into other worlding practices, understood in the language of mutual aid, abolition, decoloniality, solidarity economies, or ecosocialism? After exploring the "economization of creativity" that is occurring through these entrepreneurship programs, I would like to share some preliminary observations from my own pedagogical experiments with a course called "Another World is Possible." Working in collaboration with colleagues and former students, we are trying to create a project-based approach to our curriculum that helps students imagine and concretely work towards enacting other possible worlds.