202 innovative cooperations between schools and cultural institutions
Climate protection and children’s rights, cultural treasures and miracle machines, hip-hop and Austropop, digital humanism and cyberbullying – this is just a small selection of the topics that the OeAD will deal with in the school year 2022/23 within the framework of the Austria-wide initiative “culture connected – cooperation between schools and cultural institutions”. From 270 submissions a jury selected 202 projects in January 2023. Around 8,500 pupils from all over Austria and from all types of schools will work with cultural institutions from all art and cultural sectors within the framework of lessons in the second school semester. According to the minister of education Polaschek the focus is on enhancing pupils’ potential. He emphasises: “Schools as places of learning also extend to the immediate regional environment. Through cooperation with non-school partners the initiative is intended to enhance cultural education as well as support the pupils’ personality development.”
The OeAD’s managing director Jakob Calice emphasises: “Young people want to create change. In this initiative the pupils contribute their ideas of culture to the cooperation and create films, plays, musicals, sculptures, texts or radio broadcasts. Audio guides, apps, videos, and podcasts will be produced and/or interactive tours by peer groups will take place. Special feature: These will then be used in the cultural institutions’ further educational work.”
The Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF)-funded programme “culture connected”, which is implemented by the education agency OeAD, supports these cooperations with a maximum of 1,700 euros per project. The cultural institutions – from small, regional cultural associations to large art institutions – develop cultural activities together with the schools that enhance the skills and potential of the pupils and extend their participation in art and culture.
Statement of the jury:
“It is impressive that the submitted concepts and ideas provide a positive view of the future. They show how eager pupils are to participate in cultural life again. Following a development of recent years the cooperation partners combine analogue and digital work in exciting and diverse activities as a matter of course. It is refreshing to see how many projects extend beyond the school as a place of learning and include and help shape the cultural offerings in the regions. The pupils themselves become cultural educators. They gain the self-empowerment to pass their knowledge on to others.”
An evaluation of the funding programme carried out in 2022 highlighted the following aspect:
“When looking at the funded projects you can see that the principles underlying sustainable and self-determined learning can often be implemented in an ideal way in culture connected’s projects (...) Enabling an intensive dealing with one's own creative work and experiencing the associated psychological processes is an important learning experience in this context. All participants say that they have had lasting instructive experiences not only in direct artistic work but also in the planning and presentation.”
For more information see www.culture-connected.at