The meaning of art and drama for a intervention into education that is oriented towards participation
Methods:
Together with students, pupils and their teachers we create drama and art-based formats of cultural participation. On one hand, we aim to improve the conditions of cultural participation within educational institutions, on the other, we develop hands on patterns to achieve cultural participation through artistic means.
To attain our goals we launch two day-long workshops. In preparation, we offer to the involved students of the ZHdK from art education and theatre pedagogy, to engage with theoretical concepts and their relation to artistic methods. During the workshops the students have the opportunity to develop them further in collaboration with pupils and teachers. Thus, we hope to be able to interveave coherences, to unwind trade paths and biographies, to feel societal and colonial positionings, to perform hierarchies and privilege, to embody considerations around dependency theory and power asymmetries, etc.
Aim:
The aim is a sensitising intervention that motivates participants to develop own project ideas. Two different directions of impact are in our focus: One is to question the dichotomy between “we” and “the others” and to develop strategies to overcome that binary. Two is to acquire an understanding of the prevalent limitation of access to art – especially art education und artistic practice – and of what remains structurally unreachable for youth with experiences of migration and racism as well as for so-called educationally alienated persons. Thereby, the project aims at a transfer between teaching, theory, artistic formats, practices of mediation, institutional affiliation, and intervention.
Conclusion:
The project and the workshops are instrumental for a continued education of teachers, for a sensitisation and empowerment to develop own ideas by youth with a snowball effect, as well as for a widened and interdisciplinary education of students within their respective fields (art education and theatre pedagogy).