‘To beyond or not to be’, our slogan over these years, has proven its relevance. By becoming the norm it’s topicality has been lost. It is time to move forward and take new directions.

Within these 10 years of Volume’s existence, money has become so ingrained in our neoliberal world as a universal metric, dominated as it is by the market and marketing, that societies have lost sight of almost any other forms of value such as fairness, trust, equity, beauty, rest and uselessness. These are values we think need to be brought back to the surface, but by just going beyond we might loose sight. Powerful and highly interconnected bureaucratic systems are ruling that world that nobody seems to steer or fully understand. We as cultural agents have to go to the edges of the system we cannot leave, to scratch at some backdoors that have no door-handles and put some wrenches to work; to dig and excavate, to unfold and rewrap.

The pressing social, political and urban questions of today cannot be dealt with from within the familiar bounds we are comfortable operating, by just one form of knowledge, one discipline, one type of practice, one approach or one cultural background.

To get a grip we need to learn: to re-learn, unlearn, experiment, test, research, play.

The Learning Network is determined to collaboratively take on the gathering, unearthing, analyzing, flipping, scrutinizing, disseminating, contesting and spreading of knowledge that is essential to address and cope with the urgencies of our changing societies.

The Learning Network is a loose collaborative organism for both well-established and cutting edge knowledge practices, each dedicated to their own expertise, interests and modus operandi, but strengthening each other by sharing stories and outputs, by using and offering facilities and perspective. The Learning Network is flexible and can change its composition; it can grow and shrink according to needs and wishes. The composition of the network and the methods to be used are as multifaceted as the themes at hand.

The Learning Network will take on a wide area of topics, like for instance: segregation, infrastructure, transparency, conflict, education, artificial intelligence, community, labor and monetization. These topics are to be explored and disseminated.