The School of Disobedience is not only a real school, but a metaphor for Leinonen’s retrospective exhibition that took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma 2015-2016. The School of Disobedience offers its students revolutionary ideas and concrete tools for making the world better. Visitors are treated as students, receiving lessons from the more than 100 works on view or through workshops that encourage to civil disobedience. To the school’s workshops Leinonen invited experienced activists and opinion leaders to teach people how to effectively confront and solve social problems. The workshops included lessons on social movement formation, media criticism, music as a tool for revolution, and social media to critique big-name corporations. All the classes had a focus on social media as a key tool for mobilising people.
Leinonen’s School of Disobedience received worldwide media attention and the exhibition continued from Helsinki to ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark in the spring of 2016.
The school building is now part of the Finnish National Gallery Kiasma’s permanent collection.
