Month: September 2021

Birgit Mandel is a Professor of culture communication and culture management as well as being Director of the Department of Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim. She heads the Master’s programme on Cultural Mediation as well as the Bachelor’s programme on Civilisation Studies and Aesthetic Practice. Mandel is Vice-President of the Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft, a member of the CommerzbankFoundation board of trustees, for which she developed the “ZukunftsGut” award for the institutional communicating of culture, as well as a member of the supervisory board of Berlin Kulturprojekte GmbH. Furthermore, she is a founding member of the Fachverband für Kulturmanagement (culture management professional association) and headed the association for several years. She has conducted a wide range of research projects at the interface of culture communication, Cultural Education, audience development, culture management and cultural policy as well as surveys of visitors and interviews among the public and is the author of many publications.

 

What is your professional focus?

My focal areas are research and teaching in culture communication at the interface between aesthetic and artistic practice, art and culture communication, Cultural Education and cultural policy.

 

What potentials do you see in the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” for your specialist field?

Art offers special potentials for Cultural Education since it simultaneously addresses people at an emotional, aesthetic and intellectual level. Being free of any defined object and bearing a playful character, it enables “rehearsals of action” and can form utopian spaces: “everything could also be very different”. Thanks to its ambiguity and its surplus of meaningfulness “there is no one correct solution”, conflicts and contradictions can also be discussed within its framework. These qualities of art can become productive in connection with communication strategies in various societal contexts such as school, youth work, urban development, political activities or in business enterprises.

Since our civilisation studies programmes in Hildesheim have also been oriented on the potential of art in communication in the widest sense ever since they were launched in 1978, this certificate course directly takes up our expertise and further develops it for freelance artists.

 

Which changes are needed at cultural policy or education policy level to strengthen the potentials of cooperation with artists for Cultural Education in Germany?

There are already many funding programmes at the level of Federal and State governments and local government for artists in Cultural Education, although they are frequently part of project structures. It would make sense to have the field of “Cultural Education” firmly anchored in all schools of general education with continuous contracts for artists. In the public cultural institutions, the share of communication could be raised – e.g. with a provision referring to communication activities in the budget. This could also open up options for continuous activities of freelance artists.

 

Birgit Mandel at “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”

Birgit Mandel is taking part in the course framework as a lecturer in Module 1: “Potentials of art for cultural education processes”, Modul 5: “Culture Management for Art Creators in Cultural Education” and Module 6: “Cultural Institutions as Places of Learning”. Furthermore, as the artistic project director, she was involved in designing and launching the pilot course.

For details, see: https://kuenstlerische-interventionen.de/team/.

If you have any queries or are interested in cooperating, you are welcome to contact zertifikatskurs [at] uni-hildesheim [dot] de.

 

 

Dr Tom Braun is a Professor of Cultural and Media Pedagogics at the IU International University of Applied Sciences. Prior to that he was Managing Director of the German Federation for Arts Education and Cultural Learning (BKJ), and was responsible for the design and implementation of Federal-wide model and practice research projects as well as measures for a Federal-wide field development of professional structures in cultural and media pedagogics. Tom Braun is a member of the Federal Government’s Federal Youth Curatorium, the Board of the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kinder- und Jugendhilfe” (AGJ – working group on chid and youth welfare) and the scientific advisory council of the knowledge platform kubi-online.

 

What is your professional focus?

Research and work foci: theory and practice of cultural education, critical cultural pedagogics, cultural school development.

 

What potentials do you see in the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” for your specialist field?

When practitioners from art and culture want to become active in schools, they have to be able to develop and reflect upon their own subject-matter knowledge and relate it to the school’s educational mission and its actors. Artistic interventions can only have a sustainable effect in the education sector if they are planned and implemented by reflected practitioners in cooperation with the responsible field actors. This is also the yardstick against which the certificate course has to be measured.

 

Which changes are needed at cultural policy or education policy level to strengthen the potentials of cooperation with artists for Cultural Education in Germany?

The urgent task ahead is that of an analogue-digital education concept which is above all oriented on the rights of children and youths to support, participation and protection. In this sense, it is important to develop all-day education tailored to the needs of children and youths. In terms of concepts, this also means that the right to fully participate in cultural life has to be fundamentally taken into consideration for all children and youths. But this can only work with improved cooperation on the part of the Federal and State governments and local authorities on the one hand and through favourable framework conditions enabling multi-professional cooperation among school actors and actors outside schools on the other. But all of this amounts to nothing without better involvement of the children and youths themselves!

 

Tom Braun at “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”

Tom Braun is taking part in the course framework as a lecturer in Module 4: “Cultural Education in school contexts”. If you have any queries or are interested in cooperating, you are welcome to contact zertifikatskurs [at] uni-hildesheim [dot] de

 

Maike Gunsilius is a Professor of Aesthetics of Children’s and Youth Theatre at the University of Hildesheim Foundation. As a cultural scholar, dramaturgist and performance creator, she has been working at theatres, including in Basel, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg, as well as in theatrical urban projects, free performances and schools since 2003. She has also lectured at universities, including in Hamburg and Hildesheim. Her research focus is dramaturgies in contemporary and performance-oriented children’s and youth theatre as well as participatory art research with children and adults.

 

What is your professional focus?

I look at how contemporary forms of theatre and performance for and with children and youths handle their questions and concerns. In this context, I understand children’s and youth theatre as artistic democratic practice with which issues of living together in a diversified society are discussed for the present and the future and in which it is therefore always crucial to reassess the perspective of children and youths and their position in society in relation to adults.

 

What potentials do you see in the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” for your specialist field?

I regard dealing with social diversity and transformation issues in close contact with different citizens as a challenge for cultural activities and education institutions. For artists, this means making a greater effort to cooperate with very different experts on everyday life and developing art forms and work methods for very heterogeneous constellations. The certificate course offers the opportunity to provide the expertise needed to accomplish this.

 

Which changes are needed at cultural policy or education policy level to strengthen the potentials of cooperation with artists for Cultural Education in Germany?

Time and staff are the key resources for artistic activities in social fields in order to be able to deal with diversity issues and ownership justice in artistic projects both with regard to structural and aesthetic dimensions. This calls for new staffing and timing – and corresponding better funding.

 

Maike Gunsilius at “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”

Maike Gunsilius is taking part in the course framework as a lecturer in Module 1: “Potentials of art for cultural education processes”. If you have any queries or are interested in cooperating, you are welcome to contact zertifikatskurs [at] uni-hildesheim [dot] de

Seraphina Lenz studied sculpture at the University of Fine Arts Münster, and since 2001, she has been developing exhibitions at home and abroad. Together with five other artists, she operates the project facility oqbo |raum für bild wort und ton in Berlin. Lenz has received numerous awards and scholarships for her art works: 2021 Artist in Residence, P1 mobile Studio, Tenthaus, Norway; 2015 ARIO Residency, Odawara, Japan; 2002 to 2014 first prize and realisation in the art competition for the Carl Weder Park, Berlin.

From 2019 to 2020, Lenz had a teaching assignment at the College of Fine Arts (UDK) Berlin, and also in 2019, she worked as a teaching artist at Bern University of the Arts (HKB) in Switzerland. From 2011 to 2013, she was a lecturer at the Institute for Art in Context at the UDK Berlin. Previously, in 2010, she had been a teaching artist at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg and had worked from 2001 to 2005 as an artist in the research project Cultural Education in the Media Age of the Federal and State Commission for Educational Planning and Research Promotion (BLK). In 2000, she held a visiting lectureship at Yokohama National University in Japan.

 

What is your professional focus?

My artistic work originates from sculpting. In the 2000s, interest focused on creating urban spaces. The town is the stage and venue for societal topics. It becomes an object of research and an experiential space in which different living environments meet and in which historical dimensions, architecture and consumption act upon perception and behaviour. It is important for me to conceive projects on a long-term basis in order to be able to develop specific forms of cooperation with residents. Various teaching activities in the context of schools and higher education form a further focus of my activities. Links emerge between both areas.

 

What potentials do you see in the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” for your specialist field?

With the diversifying field of art, processes of art communication and definitions of Cultural Education change simultaneously. Concepts emerge the meaning of which may be altered depending on the context. For example, what does intervention mean – here, today, and in this context?

Whereas the debates on art and education in the 1990s were characterised by comparatively static and easy to distinguish positions, a new fluidity appears to prevail in 2021.

In my opinion, the course offers the opportunity for the participants to gain a common understanding of concepts and, being aware of different possible positions, work out an artistic attitude of their own. This can provide a basis for developing the field of work of Cultural Education setting out from art.

 

Which changes are needed at cultural policy or education policy level to strengthen the potentials of cooperation with artists for Cultural Education in Germany?

With reference to the previous answer, I would like to turn the question into six queries. What is the cultural policy level? What is the education policy level? Which potentials are meant? What does strong cooperation feature? What definition of Cultural Education should one set out from? And what concept of art or professional profile of artists is relevant? I would be interested in reaching an understanding of these issues during the weekend course in Wolfenbüttel.

 

Seraphina Lenz at “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”

Seraphina Lenz is taking part in the course framework as a lecturer in Module 1: “Potentials of art for cultural education processes”.

For details, see: https://kuenstlerische-interventionen.de/team/.

If you have any queries or are interested in cooperating, you are welcome to contact zertifikatskurs [at] uni-hildesheim [dot] de

Alicia de Bánffy-Hall is a Professor of Aesthetic Practice in Social Work focusing on Music and Media, at the University of Applied Sciences Landshut (with music and media as a focal area. After doing a B.A. in Performing Arts/Community Music and a M.Sc. in Arts and Cultural Management, she lived in Liverpool, England, for ten years and worked as a community musician throughout Europe. She was involved in projects with, among others, orchestras, museums, schools, day-care centres and community centres as well as in free projects. In Germany, De Bánffy-Hall took part in developing the first M.A. degree course including Music Pedagogics/Community Music. She is a member of the Community Music Network Board, and she is also a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal for Community Music and the Community Music Activity Commission.

 

What is your professional/artistic/academic focus?

I focus on community music, intersecting with music in social work, music pedagogics and cultural education.

 

What potentials do you see in the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” for your specialist field?

I regard the course as an important supplement to the existing further education programmes, since it explicitly addresses artists. I above all find the interdisciplinary form of art exciting!

 

Which changes are needed at cultural policy or education policy level to strengthen the potentials of cooperation with artists for Cultural Education in Germany?

Realistic funding and training for artists in the field of social innovations is essential. That is why this certificate course is so important! In addition, sensitising education and cultural institutions for the potentials of cooperating with artists is of high significance.

 

Alicia de Bánffy-Hall at “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”

Alicia de Bánffy Hall is taking part in the course framework as a lecturer in Module 1: “Potentials of art for cultural education processes”. If you have any queries or are interested in cooperating, you are welcome to contact zertifikatskurs [at] uni-hildesheim [dot] de

Prof Dr Frank Jebe (*1973) is an artist and education scientist as well as a Professor of Art and Intercultural Communication at Hochschule Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences. Prior to that, he dealt with the publications and studies of the Committee of Experts as an academic consultant at the Office of the Council for Cultural Education. From 2008 to 2013, as a freelance project manager of the Düsseldorf Office of Cultural Affairs, he was responsible for child day-care facilities, primary and secondary schools as well as youth camp facilities. The cooperation projects featured programmes testing artistic concepts related to social spaces. From 1996 to 2003, Jebe studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. From 2009 to 2012, he studied education science at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

 

 

 

 

What is your professional focus?

With art and art communication, different foci play a role when I teach at Hochschule Niederrhein. Here, Cultural Education in early childhood, artistic rehearsal, the forms of action in communicating culture, project management in the cultural sector and the cultural dimension of digitality are predominant elements. In the lectures on artistic rehearsal, my biographical relations to fine art play a particularly crucial role. Regarding my research interest, my focus is on the interfaces between culture and school which are relevant to education. In addition to the question of how input from artists in the sense of the liberal arts is entering schools, to me, issues regarding education policy expectations of art or regarding the education potentials for communicating culture, all of which has to be researched in the course of digitisation, appear to be of importance.

 

What potentials do you see in the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” for your specialist field?

The professionalisation of this field certainly bears a great potential. To me, however, the central keyword is “visibility”. The certificate course holds the potential to bring an activity field to the fore for artists which is hardly focused on in the academies. If, beyond this, the important experiences which are entering schools with the art programmes can actually be visualised, a lot will have been gained.

 

Which changes are needed at cultural policy or education policy level to strengthen the potentials of cooperation with artists for Cultural Education in Germany?

It remains to be seen whether the certificate can succeed in structurally boosting the role of artists on the “free” education market. The imbalance in power between the solo freelancers and school as an institution seems rather too great to make this probable. To me, the step which has to be taken in education policy is that local authorities accept more responsibility in selecting and seconding extra-school providers of education services. The City of Düsseldorf has given a good example of how this can work with its “Düsseldorfer Modell”.

 

Frank Jebe at “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”

Frank Jebe is taking part in the course framework as a lecturer in Module 2: “Theoretical concepts and discourses”.

If you have any queries or are interested in cooperating, you are welcome to contact zertifikatskurs [at] uni-hildesheim [dot] de.

 

Mona Marijke Jas is an artist and researcher in the field of curating and mediating contemporary art. Among her activities, she was Faculty Member of documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens in 2017 and headed mediation at the 10th Berlin Biennale 2018. Furthermore, she led the research project Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education at the Institute for Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim and represented the professorship for Cultural Education there. Since 2021, Mona Jas has been artistic director of the KinderKunstLabor, AUT, which opens in 2024 and shows contemporary art for and with a young audience and puts it up for discussion. As of 2015, she has represented the field of curating, art education, and cultural education as an honorary professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. Her research focus is on the artistic mediation of contemporary fine arts and Biennales.

What is your professional focus?

As an artist and scholar, I am always eager to create networks via which the artists and various institutions such as schools, universities, art institutions and social facilities can meet and cooperate at eye-level. The special aspect here is mutual dialogue. My artistic impulses and scholarly analyses feed into qualification programmes for artists, into teaching and into art institutions. Against this background, we create a wealth of common experience with children, youths and adults some of whom have the opportunity for the first time to enter into intensive communication with contemporary art and the institutions belonging to it. Together, we develop interactive communication formats – and communication can develop which reaches across generations and social spaces.

 

What potentials do you see in the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” for your specialist field?

Here, creators of art and culture can be supported in generating movement and change. This is very import for a society, but is also equally important for the further development of the field of art. In this context, the certificate course offers the space to reflect critically on one’s own work, irritate others and also become irritated oneself. In order to be able to change things, we have to be familiar with systems. This is the only way to find out where the weaknesses as well as the strengths are and at which points changes become possible. Changes are above all possible when artists’ awareness of their own interpretational sovereignty is strengthened. These are central aspects of the course, and they also include seeking artistic quality in communication, together with a self-critical contextualisation of artistic work in education in the context of diversity, internationality and local references.

 

Which changes are needed at cultural policy or education policy level to strengthen the potentials of cooperation with artists for Cultural Education in Germany?

At cultural and education policy level, improving the economic situation of artists, for example through universal basic income. This can ensure the development of a space in which it becomes possible beyond political objectives and market forces to pursue one’s own intrinsic motivation to work in the education and social field. What then also counts is to record the contradictions of a complex societal reality of artists at political level and in the education sector: market versus political engagement – or are both possible? And how does this in turn fit in with the artistic claim to singularity and quality? Or with the economic situation referred to above? At least one can note that linear and rigid concepts of artistic work in the education sector are no help. Today, we can observe not only complexities but also the possibilities for mutually contradictory processes to proceed at the same time. This has to be given much more consideration in the cultural and education policy field.

 

Mona Jas at “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”

Mona Jas is taking part in the course framework as a lecturer in Module 1: “Potentials of art for cultural education processes”. Furthermore, as the artistic project director, she was involved in designing and launching the pilot course.

For details, see: https://kuenstlerische-interventionen.de/team/.

If you have any queries or are interested in cooperating, you are welcome to contact zertifikatskurs [at] uni-hildesheim [dot] de