Crafting Magic > Conjuring Open Practices

Wednesday 4th March 2026 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM UTC / GMT

“Ecologic” in the context of open education is approached here as a complex metaphor that, at very least, blends “oikos”, “ology”, “open” and “education”. Distinct metaphorical blends offer a myriad of ways of interconnecting open education and its milieus. Such metaphorical blends are forms of syntactical magic (“spellcasting”) that generate their own grammar (grimoire).

Bio-cultural metaphors are thus agents of biophillic organisation – they conjure open relations and situate actions. I want to focus on two “eco”-metaphors that describe open educational practices (OEPs) that I adapt when teaching art: “conceptual blending” and “jootsing”.

I will ask two key questions in relation to these approaches :

Q. What sort of enabling constraints (building-blocks) might blending and jootsing conjure, and which actions do they situate?

Q. How do eco-OEPs that incorporate blending and jootsing support the co-creation of open educational resources and practices in the domain of contemporary art?

Situating blending and jootsing in relation to more salient eco-educational metaphors – such as “shallow” and “deep” ecology, biophillia, (dis)enchantment, magical relations, technic, and panarchy – broaches how we conjure new boundary rationalisations, identifications and open organisational forms. At the same time, it reveals how engaging students directly in tricksterish practices of blending and jootsing leads to the co-creation of open practices and resources.

See: https://gitlab.com/neil-mulholland/joots-cards