English Out There

This work of art has been nineteen years in the making. It contains verifiable statements of fact that are in the public domain. We consider this work and our actions leading up to it to be a form of activist or protest art. We are aware of an international movement called Law as Art.

Our activist legal work deliberately challenges the system that perpetuates inequality. Using the law in a way that was highly unusual though not prohibited by the Civil Procedure Rules and just about affordable for a one-person publishing company enabled us to hold a multi-billion pound organisation to account in a way that our previous five years of correspondence had completely failed to do. Normally legal claims go up in monetary value relative to their importance and perceived seriousness. In our case we purposefully chose to dispense with the universal legal concept of civil compensation being primarily a financial consideration. After repeated attempts to silence us using idle threats of defamation legal action we realised that a publisher really is only as good as its reputation for being ethical in its dealings with other people's ideas.

Item I - Document sent to all 20 delegates (the board) of Oxford University Press

Item II - Video

Item II - Video

You can view all of the items in the collection on Open Sea now here: https://opensea.io/collection/nineteen-years-in-the-making

We kept on creating...this is the finished interactive artwork which contains previously unpublished original documents, the original published files, a nice collage and a certificate of authenticity. It also comes with a legal indemnity clause since ownership of the unpublished documents will pass to the new owner and they will have the power to decide what to do with them and with whom to share them (if anyone at all). The artwork will be minted as an NFT and sold after auction. We will add more details as and when we have them.

The world's on-going pursuit of knowledge, our entire civilisation as we know it, was and still is founded upon great places of academic endeavour and integrity of which the University of Oxford is probably the most celebrated in the world. In early 2010 Oxford University Press (OUP), the biggest and most famous academic press in the world, had their first formal contact with our tiny publishing company Languages Out There Ltd (LOT) and the ideas behind its unique social learning and social media English course called English Out There (EOT).

LOT had conceived and begun developing EOT on the streets of London in 2001 and had then adapted it very specifically in the early days of Skype and Facebook to become a course that could be used highly effectively with the then still relatively new online social media. Following that, in late 2011, OUP asked us to a second meeting in Oxford to discuss our innovative work. In both 2010 and 2011 OUP directors rejected further discussions on the basis that they were not and, never would be, interested in using social media to facilitate English language learning because it didn't fit their business model. However, in June 2012 OUP published a five course book series called Network Get Connected and marketed it as "unique" and “the first course to use social networking to help students succeed in English”. They also simultaneously launched a Brazilian based English language teaching business called Achieve Languages designed to sell Network Get Connected through one hundred teaching centres across Brazil.

Ideas are important. Especially to those who have them and spend their working lives trying to grow them. The University of Oxford, of which OUP is a fully owned department, understands this. Or so it says. Faced with blanket denials of any unethical behaviour by OUP directors and the seemingly impossible task of trying to establish the truth about what happened there in 2010, 2011 and 2012 Languages Out There Ltd decided to use the law in a slightly different way. The UK courts tend not to appreciate litigants-in-person. They also don't really like litigants-in-person innovating with the law. But the claim for deceit that Languages Out There Ltd launched in July 2018 sought merely an apology, attribution and £3000 of legal investigation costs from 2013. The claim cost just £205 to file. It was a very small claim about a very big problem. No defence was ever filed. Instead the best lawyers that money can buy chose to attack the claim using legal technicalities. Languages Out There Ltd had its case struck out. It appealed on the basis that the Judge had made a clear error in law. The appeal did not succeed and, frustratingly, some very important questions remained (and still remain) unanswered.

However, it was clearly established by the court that the idea for the first ever English course to integrate online social media and social networking, such as Facebook and Skype, did in fact originate with Languages Out There Ltd.

To date Oxford University Press and its owners the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford have refused to give credit to Languages Out There Ltd despite having marketed its own course as "unique" and "the first" whilst it had highly privileged access to important information about the ideas behind EOT and also having asked to meet and discuss English Out There with the managing director of Languages Out There Ltd, Jason West in November 2011.

Learn more and give us a bit of help HERE