“This feels like the start of something” — Storying the 2010 Exeter Occupation

Abstract

The University of Exeter was home to a student led occupation in November and December 2010. The occupation was a protest against education and public sector cuts and the rise in student tuition fees. It also became a site for a progressive re-presentation of the university, with the temporary space of the Exeter Free University, a publically accessible pedagogical space within the heart of the neoliberal university. This intervention emerged from a collaborative writing workshop within the Exeter Free University. Here, the storying (or, perhaps, storifying) of the Exeter Occupation is re-presented through the writing of the occupation, created at the time, in and through the emerging spaces of protest, radical pedagogy, and collective creativity. We mediate the unfolding dialogues but allow the material to speak for itself, to unfold and tell the story.