The School for Public Life

The School for Public Life: A Study Group for Listening

From January 2025, Bureau for Listening will organize a monthly School for Public Life – a possible study group on/for/with/by listening. Its session will be held at different public spaces across Copenhagen and engage directly with the urban tissue as a site for exploration and intervention and as a chance to nurture practices of radical receptivity and attentiveness to the social, political, and ecological dimensions of listening.

Each convening seek to offer diverse perspectives on listening as a critical and creative act. These sessions will explore listening as a means of fostering dialogue, revealing hidden narratives, and transforming shared spaces within civic practices. Different invited artists and theorists, and collaborations with institutions will support this attempt by sharing their unique perspectives within the sessions.

The School for Public Life will work toward an ecology of attention, using listening to cultivate resonant and relational practices that imagine new possibilities for public life. Join us in this journey as we transform the city into a field of inquiry and listening into a tool for collective transformation.

This is initiated in the anticipation of a manifestation of the Listening Biennial in Copenhagen during September and October 2025.

Everyone is welcome, all sessions will be held outside. No registration is necessary. We update ongoingly where and when here on the website and through other channels.

Due to limited capacities, please regiester by writing to bureauforlistening@gmail.com.

Calendar/programme/info: 

Session 1:

January, Thursday the 30th, 16.30-18.00

We meet at the future to be ‘Palestina Square’, at the conjunction between Nørrebrogade, Esromgade and Hillerødgade – across from Den Røde Plads (Red Square) (see photo to the right).

Possible content:

  •  Upstart: Walking and Listening; Lecture Demonstrations for a new Public
  • ‘What is a ‘School for Public Life’ – searching for other dreams, hopes, questions, wonderings and problems; a workshop for re-imaginations and -orientations.
    • Reading of The Big Welcome
    • Listening Walk – dreams for new publics – reappropriation of Max Neuhaus’ ‘Listen’ 
    • Sharing/discussion – creation of invitations for walking and listening in the public