Action Research Centre

After five years of working at the urban periphery of Belgrade, Škograd collective has established its own Action Research Centre, with the support of the International Relief Fund of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut, and other partners. By analyzing and understanding the dialectical relationship between the educational process and the urban (re)production of social arrangements, the team directs its actions to overcome the structural discriminatory practices against deprived children of the urban periphery.

Škograd gathers professionals who gained their formal education in various fields, most notably in art, architecture, urban studies, philosophy, and pedagogy. However, Škograd establishes a mutual learning flow among traditionally separated disciplinary registers – those of spatial arts with those of social arts – and its approach could be characterized as post-disciplinary. The team shares some of the core human values such as compassion, solidarity, curiosity, persistence, humility, and dignity that enables us to productively combine our specific expertise in multiplying our goals. It is to these values that we commit ourselves and it is with these values that we contribute to the emergence of a more just, plural, and democratic urban society.

The Action Research Centre in particular enables us to translate our critical empirical insights into impactful and context-specific educational materials and policy recommendations targeting marginalised suburban communities. By co-producing new meanings through local actions at the urban periphery of Belgrade, the Centre is a valuable link for the professional and political communities with marginalised suburban communities. The establishment of this new link through the self-institution of a new Action Research Centre aims at ameliorating the apparent negative effects of underprivileged socio-spatial arrangements of marginalised communities in our society.

Our working formats are diverse, and always context-specific, however, to illustrate a few we are especially good at: