Not sure why I’ve not got round to reading Lemke in the original until now, but his paper ‘becoming the village’ is about the best, most accessible, most theoretically informed summary of why schooling needs to change that I’ve read for a while

The intro reads -  ‘Welcome to Social Lab - part investigation, part experimentation and part playground.’ - what’s not to like?

This doesn’t mean it’s spring though. It’s still midwinter.

Flying in over Kent on Tuesday

I spent last Monday walking around a freezing cold Vienna, my scarf wrapped over my nose, my hat jammed down, hands in pockets. To escape from the cold we ended up in the Albertina, a beautiful art gallery/royal palace with a permanent exhibition that includes strangely unadvertised exquisite sketches by Michelangelo as well as a sort of ‘100 painters everyone has to see before they die’ romp through from Monet to Picasso. The luxury of a weekday in an art gallery meant time to stop and stare at each picture, and I was completely swallowed up by the sheer indulgence and pleasures of tracing Emil Nolde’s brushstrokes in Forest, and refreshed by the simplicity and peace of Cezanne’s ‘farm in Normandy’.

As we had time, we also visited the new Magritte Exhibition, which is really the reason I’m writing this. I was alternately so irritated and enamoured of this exhibition

Beautiful bark and lichen on a redwood at Stourhead

“To each era its art, to art its freedom”. A seriously confrontational call from the Vienna Secession. And today? This idea manifests itself as eerie empty packaging in the contemporary exhibition. Downstairs, the Klimt Beethoven Frieze is still breathtaking.