This paper considers how the ‘refrain’ functions as a powerful model for thinking about public pedagogy in both a theoretical and practical way. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have attributed the refrain with functions that are as slippery and subversive as public pedagogy. It is through these functions that the refrain becomes a useful tool for thinking about togetherness and separation, particularity as we return to shared public life and space after the sustained isolation experienced during the pandemic. It suggests that the refrain might be able to help us understand that we are never fully together or apart as it creates a sense of calming familiarity but also offers an inevitable ‘flight out’ (and it’s return). This flight out is, by its very nature also political, as it demands a certain type of discordance. Whilst reflecting on the refrain as a model of togetherness and separation, this paper questions whether public pedagogy has any place within an institutional setting, specifically in the tertiary art and design sector. Or if such a setting is the antithesis to the very ethos of public pedagogy? In doing so, it reflects on the ‘Art and Text’ series of critiques that were facilitated by the late Bernhard Sachs at the VCA in the early 2000s, as an example of public pedagogy that sat both within and outside the parameters of the arts institution. It asks these questions whilst reflecting on whether the refrain can provide a model for harmonic togetherness and discordance.