The Melbourne Free University provides a platform for learning, discussion and debate which is open to everyone. The MFU was established in 2010 in response to Australia’s increasingly outcome oriented education system, and aims to offer space for independent engagement with important contemporary ideas and issues.

The MFU runs six-week courses on a range of subjects and themes, with classes taking place on weekday evenings from 6.30-8pm in Melbourne’s inner north. Each session starts with a 45 minute presentation by an expert on the issue at hand, followed by a 45 minute participant-driven discussion. This is not a Q&A session – we believe that everyone has something important to bring to the discussion, regardless of their education, job, or experience, and hope to create a space where the community can come together to learn off one another and debate salient current issues.

There is no enrolment, no registration, no fee; you are free to come to any session.

The MFU also runs once-off sessions on a range of topics throughout the year, keep an eye on this space for details.

All our past sessions are available for download on our Recordings page here.

Contact us: If you’d like to know more about the MFU or volunteer to teach at the MFU, please contact us at melbournefreeuniversity@gmail.com.

If you’d like to subscribe to our newsfeed, please use the subscribe panel on the right of this page, or email us at melbournefreeuniversity@gmail.com.

Renovations at the MFU:

MFU Manual Launch

!![special event]!!

May the 5th 2012

“How to Start a Free UNI”

(Clemens, Conor, Chapman)

‘How to Start a Free University: A Guide by the Melbourne Free University’

Since the MFU’s inception two years ago, we have been getting lots of feedback and requests to start free universities elsewhere in Australia and overseas. To allow more people to share in our endeavour we podcast most of our lectures, but want to do more. We want to support other communities to set up their own free universities.

We have written a simple manual on how to start your own free university, which takes people through our philosophy (why we started the MFU, and the free uni philosophy more broadly) and provides a simple and accessible guide on how to start a free uni in your own community. Because every community is different, this is not a step-by-step instruction manual, but rather an exploration of the issues people will need to consider and the questions they’ll need to ask themselves when setting up their own free uni. Topics covered range from defining your aims, objectives and expectations, to building an audience base, finding venues, designing courses, finding lecturers, and media, marketing and outreach. We share our experiences – the things we’ve found hard, the things we’ve found useful, solutions we’ve discovered, and so on. We also share the thoughts of others involved in the MFU as participants, speakers, supporters and course coordinators.

This manual is freely available to everyone: You can either download it here, or you can contact us and request a hardcopy to be sent to you. We would like to be able to post the hardcopies we printed out to community groups, community libraries, neighbourhood houses and other groups who are interested in starting a free university. If you are able, please send us a self addressed and stamped envelope and we’ll post a manual out to you, but if you’re not able to do this, please contact us and we’ll post one out to you anyway. We will post full details of how to order a manual here after the launch.

                *** Manual designed by Benjamin Portas benjaminportas.com ***

Saturday the 5th of May 2012, 6.30-8.30pm at The Alderman (upstairs), 134 Lygon St East Brunswick

Current courses:

“It is true that we do not know that humans are equal. We are saying that they might be. This is our opinion, and we are trying, with those who believe as we do, to verify it. But we know that this might is exactly what makes a society of humans possible.”

Jacques Rancière