Aula d’Idiomes is one of the organisations based at La Comunal. The project began in 2014, and was consolidated as a non-profit workers’ cooperative in 2017, with the aim of offering a horizontal, high-quality language teaching and learning environment based on the principles of self-management and direct democracy, anti-capitalism and critical pedagogy. Being both teachers and learners at the same time, we endeavour to carry out our work from a feminist and decolonial perspective. Currently, we offer courses in Basque, Arabic, Galician, Catalan, Italian, Spanish, German, French and English, as well as translation services and language consultancy.
As professionals working in the field of languages, we are acutely aware of and seek to highlight the relationships between language, society and power within the economic structure of the society in which we live. Consequently, as a collective, we are committed to the promotion of a cooperative culture which works to reverse inequalities, or at least, to try not to reproduce them; one which is at pains to break the stigmas suffered by a range of linguistic varieties and their speakers, and which sees linguistic diversity as an asset to be cherished.
In the day-to-day workings of the cooperative, we aim to construct a critical perspective not just of the world but also of ourselves, in an attempt to acknowledge and understand our differences, and become aware of our privileges. From our own personal experiences, we aim to take steps to provide continued review and redress. Engaging in critical pedagogy means questioning everything. This is not only the case in our classrooms, but in all the areas of the cooperative: from our assemblies to our working groups, our translations services, our language workshops, and even ourselves, which places us in the role of learners.
