Susanne Rehm has been Managing Director of the Baden-Württemberg Association for Cultural Youth Education (LKJ) since 2015. The LKJ implements programmes and projects in cultural and media-assisted youth education and is the state-wide umbrella association and special interest group for cultural education involving children and youths. Before becoming Managing Director of the LKJ Baden-Württemberg, Rehm had headed the state-level office “Cultural Agents for Creative Schools” in Baden-Württemberg. Here, she was able to put her wide range of experience to use which she had previously gathered as a free-lance theatre pedagogue, producer and cultural manager. She had also studied drama, film and television studies, art history and English language and literature in Bochum und Dublin.
What is your professional focus?
As Managing Director of the Baden-Württemberg Association for Cultural Youth Education, I represent the entire field of extra-school Cultural Education in Baden-Württemberg vis-à-vis politics, administration and the public. In order to be able to fulfil this task well, it is important for me to be closely in touch with the various groups of actors in this field. Another concern of mine is to promote development of Cultural Education as a subject area. For this purpose, I again and again work out model projects and programmes with my team which address respective topical issues and challenges facing Cultural Education. Last but not least, we inform actors in Cultural Education about state-of-the-art developments.
What potentials do you see in the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” for your specialist field?
Artists are important actors in Cultural Education. With the Certificate Course, they receive knowhow enabling them to contribute their artistic work to the Cultural Education landscape in an even better manner. In addition, the participants deal with issues going beyond their field of action in proper, e.g. in order to be able to develop Cultural Education programmes in cooperation with others or with digital tools and to launch them in the long term. This is an important extension to the activity skills of artists. It offers the perspective to reach out to new target groups for Cultural Education projects.
Which changes are needed at cultural policy or education policy level to strengthen the potentials of cooperation with artists for Cultural Education in Germany?
Schools play a central role in enabling across-the-board access to and participation in Cultural Education programmes for all children and youths. Here, artists can become involved in collaborative schemes with their specific qualities. This works particularly well where schools follow concepts in which these programmes form a part of their curriculum. The Federal States hold the education and culture policy responsibility for this. Here, unfortunately, the framework conditions still vary considerably. So what counts in the long term is to strengthen cooperation between schools and extra-school education partners and to create appropriate legal and financial framework conditions.
Susanne Rehm at “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”
Susanne Rehm is taking part as a lecturer in the context of the Certificate Course in Module 3: “Strategies and Practice Formats in Communicating Art and Culture”. If you have any queries or are interested in cooperating, please get in touch with zertifikatskurs [at] uni-hildesheim [dot] de.