This paper presents the case of a learner organized college, Pecket Well, as a study of democratic learning and participation and discusses how the inclusive (but "slow") goals and processes of this kind of programme have been difficult to sustain within current assessment frameworks, funding and discourses of adult literacies. Using the approach of socio-material theory (Fenwick and Edwards, 2013) this paper will present this case as an example of the struggle of the “non-standard” to exist in an increasingly normative world of adult literacy. It will identify the alliances and supporting factors that contributed to the development of the college and show, in contrast, how harmonising projects of international assessment travel into local sites like Pecket Well and “disorganize them”. Using materials from Pecket’s recent oral history and archive project (Nugent, 2013) it will also show how the local site assembles itself through the use of physical artefacts and places which enable it to retain control over the ways it is classified and defined; and through efforts to develop alternative networks and sustainable alliances over time.