I am a researcher, artist, writer and educator currently living in Victoria, British Columbia. For the past three years, much of my work has centered around political theory and political ecology, as I’ve both worked and studied soil as an amateur gardener and an MA student at Acadia University in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia.
While the earth beneath exerts a strong pull, I generally tend to have my head in the clouds reading literature, philosophy, political theory, poetry, and pondering pondering pondering all the while. I am sure that my friends have grown tired of my incessant suggestions: ‘have you read so and so’s book?’ or ‘sigh, I would really like to start a reading group on x,y, or zed.’ Growing up, my family and I would sit on the porch at night and wonder aloud about the nature of the cosmos, or the folly of humankind and the institutions it created to govern its affairs. Being Chilean, my father always had many stories to tell us all of Pinochet’s coup d’etat and the forgotten golden age that came before; his telling of Chilean political history influenced my desire to learn more, and over the course of my schooling I explored the works of thinkers like Marx and Engels, Nietzsche, Camus, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari (to name a few) in order to better understand the political landscape of our twentieth century. Throughout these studies, a question (clarified for me by Foucault) has run: what are the rights of the governed?
I am inspired by organizations like the Galileo Society, a 19th century Hungarian student association, whose members sought to educate those who, for whatever reason, could not attend university. This organizational model has been repeated (Paulo Freire’s work, the Workers Education Movement, etc.) because it is worth repeating. Teaching, and the sharing of ideas and skills with others, regardless of one’s level of expertise, has always been a passion for me and given the present state of the world I think we all have a lot to learn from one another.
While in the Annapolis Valley, I worked for the Acadia Community Farm as a program coordinator, for the Arthur Irving Academy for the Environment and Friends of Agriculture in Nova Scotia as a researcher, in a volunteer capacity at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts as an all-round educator and facilitator, and at the Wolfville Farmers’ Market. I was able to mix my theoretical studies with gardening, my passion for the arts with childhood education, and my concern for broad-based societal change with the realities of the community I found myself within. The Wayward School is a logical–if not emotional–outcome of my life’s work, and I am committed to sharing my passion for learning with all whom I encounter.
