Model programme by the Federal Cultural Foundation in cooperation with the Stiftung Mercator in Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia

It is important that children have the opportunity to actively participate in art and culture. To do this, we must create an environment conducive to art where children can learn to appreciate it and engage in it themselves. The programme “Cultural Agents for Creative Schools” wants to stimulate children’s natural curiosity about art, teach them more about art and culture, help form and strengthen their personality and perhaps give them the opportunity to become future artists in a culturally-minded society. This can only be achieved if children are allowed to encounter, experience and thoughtfully engage in art and culture .

We can reach a large number of these children by going directly to schools. Over a period of four years, this project will send “Cultural Agents” to schools where they will collaborate with pupils, teachers, principals, artists and cultural institutions in creating a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary cultural education programme and establishing long-term cooperative ventures between schools and cultural institutions.

The programme can only be sustainable if it encourages schools and the cultural institutions, with which they cooperate, to develop joint cultural programmes of their own. The programme’s facilitators at these institutions – teachers, artists, cultural professionals – must recognize the necessity of ensuring the quality of the artistic projects and creating the necessary structures for them.

The central partners of the programme are the cultural institutions and the artists associated with them. The audiences of tomorrow are in schools today and that is where museums, concert halls, libraries, theatres and cultural centres will go to reach them. The goal is to jointly search for new ways and possibilities for schools and their cultural partners to promote mutual accessibility and develop model cooperative projects.

The model programme will commence in the 2011/2012 school year with a total of 50 agents at schools in Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia. As each agent will supervise a local network of up to three schools, it is possible that a total of 150 schools could participate in the programme. All the participating states have pledged to co-finance the model programme and are closely involved in its implementation.

http://kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/cms/en/programme/kunst_der_vermittlung/agenten.html