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Olek Witt – Questions

Which topic turns up again and again in your artistic activities?

Following Joseph Beuys’ motto that “everyone is an artist”, I again and again concentrate on promoting the creative potential of children and youths. I apply Devising Theatre methods in developing performances. The central aspects are collective, collaborative and improvisational work and research addressing reality in society as well as respect for different life experiences and concepts. I use unconventional formats such as theatre parcours, which enable a wider audience in various social spaces to gain more direct access to art. To me, the focal aspect is to recognise visible and invisible boundaries, to question them, for theatre art is dialogue.

What do you seek to achieve with your arts education activities?

I want to see to it that participation is strengthened, new, unconventional ways of gaining access to art beyond privileges based on origin or education are created and personal development as well as the self-responsibility of creative self-definition are enhanced. A democratic society is always a changing society. By applying theatre-pedagogical and performative methods, the development of creativeness and aesthetic education is promoted as a basis of cultural and political participation.

What, in your view, is the essence of an artistic intervention in arts education?

It supports aesthetic sensitisation and the breaking open of everyday perception through discovering, researching and a manifestation of new perspectives. Furthermore, it contributes to consciously and actively designing changes in social spaces. It promotes recognising and questioning structures which impede necessary process of change, as well as temporary and spontaneous activities in public spaces and long-term strategies drawing attention to deficits, inequalities and discrimination while simultaneously aiming at positive changes and enabling participation with comprehensive inclusion.