"What if everything were completely different? On 8 and 9 March, a wide range of actors and interested parties met to reflect on a decade of special commitment to cultural education in the Länder at the "Forum Kreativpotentiale 2022". Funded by Stiftung Mercator and accompanied for almost ten years by Wider Sense TraFo GmbH, the framework programme "Creative Potentials in Dialogue" advocated for a sustainable anchoring of cultural arts education in the education systems of the Länder. The digital final congress, which was planned together with various partners and especially the Ministry of Science, Education and Culture of the State of Schleswig-Holstein and the Mercator Foundation, once again underlined the diverse potentials of cultural arts education - especially in times of growing complexity and uncertainty.
Karin Prien, Minister for Education, Science and Culture of Schleswig-Holstein and President of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2022, formulated six theses, which she argued impressively and then discussed in a dialogue with Prof. Dr. Lydia Grün from the Detmold University of Music:
- Cultural arts education promotes resilience, conscious creation and holistic perception.
- Cultural arts education is a basis for political and democratic competence and thus a kind of cross-cutting theme that promotes perception, the ability to reflect and self-efficacy.
- Cultural arts education means education for participation.
- Cultural arts education needs sustainability.
- Cultural arts education is the joint task of education, culture and science.
- Digitality changes cultural arts education.
"The education of the future requires a great willingness to change from all of us," Karin Prien argued. And it is precisely this openness to change - to experimentation and improvisation - that is central to arts education.
Prof. Dr. Aladin El-Mafaalani, Chair of Education in the Migration Society at the University of Osnabrück, also emphasised in an impressive way that cultural arts education promotes and demands necessary competences and skills: dealing with uncertainty and complexity, the joy of experimenting, the interplay of cooperation and competition, as well as the ability to reflect and experience self-efficacy. Professor El-Mafaalani elaborated on the connection between disadvantage, migration and (educational) success, emphasising the role of family and parents: "People carry their origins within them." If we want schools to counteract this, then more needs to be done there, said Professor El-Mafaalani. For this, cultural arts education is also needed, as it particularly promotes self-efficacy and helps to deal with contradictory expectations of parents and to creatively and resiliently resolve dilemmas. Both Ms Prien and Mr El-Mafaalani therefore emphasised the advantages of systematically anchoring cultural arts education in schools and strengthening the network of school and extracurricular actors. This could bring about a change in thinking among parents and children.
In parallel workshops, the participants then deepened these insights and developed new perspectives with and on cultural arts education. One aspect was the relationship and connection between cultural and sustainable education. In the workshop "Ventilating Learning", Dr. Johanna Pareigis, biologist, educational consultant in teacher training and founder of the movement Learning Outdoors, and Antje Smorra, cultural mediator and consultant at schools for outdoor cultural education, brought about a change of perspective. In her input, Dr. Pareigis emphasised the origins of outdoor learning in Scandinavia. The two terms "Friluftsliv" (outdoor life) and "Naturbegeistring" (enthusiasm for nature) are particularly central in Norway for an attitude to life in which outdoor education is just as much a part of life as teaching in the classroom.
At first you might think, "Learning outdoors - isn't that much too wet, cold and windy? How are the children supposed to write without tables?". However, those who delve more into the topic will quickly realise that it is not about simply transferring the learning experience from indoors to outdoors. Instead, it is about a different learning experience, because learning success is greatest where the environment is complex and sometimes uncomfortable, according to the workshop leaders. Where there are more incentives to learn, we are challenged the most and become more experimental and creative. So learning outdoors can be quite different. The importance of broadening horizons in the learning environment is particularly high in Germany, where the sense of lack of self-efficacy among learners is especially pronounced compared to other countries. The workshop leaders therefore advocate the addition of nature-based components to curricula.
But it is not only about bringing school into nature. Culture and cultural arts education can certainly also benefit from a greater connection to nature. Let us briefly note that the benefits of outdoor education were already recognised by the first Asian Nobel Prize winner for literature, the Indian author Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore founded an open-air school in Shantiniketan, in West Bengal, as early as 1901, which in the course of time developed into an open-air university. To this day, art is the main subject taught here, along with numerous other subjects, which underlines the connection between outdoor learning and art and culture. Tagore believed that formal education had become too removed from nature. He therefore advocated a fusion of culture and nature and a combination of these elements in every form of education. Both cultural and formal education can thus benefit from a greater connection to nature. But how do you implement something like this? There are no limits for the creators. Whether it's outdoor theatre rehearsals, making music outdoors, circus events in the open air or outdoor art exhibitions. What is needed here is above all creativity in the individual implementation of outdoor elements in cultural projects. Finally, the philosopher Rosi Braidotti, together with many others, has repeatedly invited us to also see the nature-culture continuum and to overcome dualistic views. So what if "nature" and "culture" are interlocked and interdependent?
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Dr Luise Fischer is a research fellow and the coordinator. Among other things, she is responsible for (post-)qualitative research and networking.
Malin Nissen is a research assistant in the MetaKLuB project and works in the area of public relations, among other things.