Moving from urban to virtual spaces and back: learning in/from signature graffiti subculture

This chapter explores bottom-up development and maintenance of vernacular networked learning practices in the context of signature graffiti subculture. Situated within the conceptual framework of critical theory, it explores the role of technology in connecting and mediating various learning and communicational practices. In the spirit of early definitions of networked learning, it investigates the ways in which new network capacities, fueled by the contemporary information and communication technologies, are used to promote connections between one writer and other writers, between apprentices and mentors, and between the graffiti community and its learning resources. Networked learning is analyzed on three interrelated domains: graffitists’ interpersonal interactions, the graffiti media, and the city. In each domain, the transition from the physical to the digital is interrogated so as to reveal the educational and subcultural implications that this shift may entail. The aim of this chapter is to examine how the widening of graffiti milieu, whether enabled or facilitated by the pervasive presence of the Internet, introduces networked learning into the graffiti community; what extra transferable skills its members are equipped with for success in mainstream careers; and how networked learning transforms the way they think of and engage with their educational situations, immediate material environment, and wider social reality.