The current economic crisis is being harnessed by some British education activists to underpin the creation of new experimental education institutions. The new institutional arrangements they are developing draw more upon the social movement building practices of the environmental movement, upon the inspiration of the Paris Commune, and upon the practices of social media, than upon traditional universities. Initiatives such as the Really Free School, the University Project and the Temporary School of Thought explicitly seek to challenge the economics and structures of the traditional university. New institutions such as Hub Westminster are modelling a social-network based idea of the education institution as ‘platform’ for creative development. Groups such as Lincoln’s Social Science Centre, are exploring co-operative models for the development of educational institutions that operate alongside traditional universities. This paper maps out some of these experiments, including their location in wider pan-european practices such as Danish Kaos Pilots and the Knowledge Liberation Foundation and asks whether they would be possible if it were not for the discourse of contemporary crisis. It concludes by making a case for the criteria against which such experiments might need to be judged to be understood as a viable alternative trajectory for European education.