About us

Arts education creates spaces in which children, adolescents, and young adults can live and shape culture in a self-determined manner.

Hauptillustration von kulturformen: Links und rechts gibt es je eine Formation aus abstrakten bunten Formen. Sie ähneln geometrischen Formen wie Kugel, Ellipse, gebäudeähnliche Quader, sowie ein wellenförmiger Zylinder. Zwischen und auf den Formen sind Pflanzen. Die Formationen stehen auf dem Boden, der als Querschnitt gezeigt wird. Die Formationen sind über Wurzeln mit der Erde verbunden. Die Wurzeln verbinden sich unter der Erde miteinander. Zwischen den beiden Formationen gibt es eine Lücke. Dort wächst ein kleines Pflänzchen, das als Blüte den Stern-förmigen Teil des kulturformen-Logos trägt.

These spaces offer the resources through which they can express their voices and visions – in drawings, in writing, on stage, in front of a microphone, in video clips, behind or in front of a camera.

kultur_formen is dedicated to opening the door to arts education wide enough so that everyone can enter and providing a platform to these diverse voices. We would like to invite people with various perspectives to become participants, project leaders, or project partners. Everyone should have the oppurtunity to access the ressources necessary to do so: grants, knowledge, networks.

Our approach is critical of power structures and oriented towards diversity. That is why we are working on making access to our programmess easier. And we are constantly developing our programmess further by including knowledge and experience of people who are still marginalised in the field of arts education. This way, we can rethink concepts of art and culture and dismantle hierarchies between different kinds.

With our events - workshops, networking meetings, conversations - and publications as well as the online platform Kubinaut we create spaces in which practitioners of arts education can get informed, further their training, and come together. Additionally, we offer support programmes for artistic endeavours of and with young people. Our offers address beginners just as much as experienced practitioners.

For us, working in a way that is critical of existing power relations means questioning our own institutional position. The space in kultur_formen emphasises our responsibility to recognize the gaps in our knowledge and keep on learning as an institution. It also points to the many gaps in the cultural landscape and the structural ways in which people are excluded from it.

Shaping culture is a constant process. kultur_formen wants to support this process and connect the people engaged in it with each other. With a more diverse cultural landscape, and a bigger variety of people putting down roots in this field, more people get acesss to knowledge and aesthetics outside the box that can change society in the long run.

Find out who to contact here.

 

support

With its programmes, kultur_formen supports projects of arts education and urban practices.

The Berlin project fund for arts education finances artistic projects with children, adolescents, and young adults in different programmes. The projects are implemented in cooperation between partners from the field of arts and culture on one hand and education or youth on the other hand.

Durchstarten enables people who are leading artistic projects with young people or are planning to do so, but face barriers in other financial support programmes,to enter the field of arts education.

The Berlin project fund for urban practices supports artistic projects in the urban context at the intersection with other areas of society such as architecture, the environment, politics, and the economy.

For us, providing support means to redistribute not only financial resources. but also  knowledge and networks in many different directions, so that they reach a greater number of people. That is why our programmes include multilingual information programmes and  consultation or training programmes that address specifically to project leaders who experience forms of discrimination.

 

Connect

Culture is shaped by community. Only through relationships between people or organizations can knowledge be shared and continue to grow. Who can give us advice? How do we get access to spaces and to financing? Which artistic methods do we want to work with and on the basis of which pedagogical principles? Networking plays a key role in the work of kultur_formen.

The online platform Kubinaut is the most important digital contact point for arts education in Berlin. There, people, institutions, and projects can create profiles for themselves, present their work, send out invitations for their events, and come into contact with each other.

In the section Resources we link to freely available information offers of different protagonists in arts education - on topics in the field of cultural mediation as well as cultural and educational work critically dealing with discrimination.

kultur_formen continually works with others to develop our programmes further, especially to reach people who are still excluded in the field of arts education. As a team, we bring together diverse perspectives and knowledges from the fields of art, culture, youth work, education, politics, and anti-discrimination. In addition, we keep on expanding our connections with diverse communities and networks. You can find more under partners.

 

Change

kultur_formen aims to support processes of change. We are convinced that only a critical analysis of power when it comes to knowledge leads to change: What knowledge counts as knowledge? Who has access to knowledge? We understand working in a ay that is critical of power as a necessary tool for project leaders and participants to understand and change their own roles in systems of power.

kultur_formen’s events create spaces where beginners and experienced project leaders can meet. Spaces where they can compare notes, learn from each other, and educate together. Frequently, this exchange leads to synergies like new partnerships and new alliances.

The entries in our blog engage in current discussions, offer tipps from practitioners of arts education, and report on experiences and insights.

Under publications you can find extensive and thematically relevant publications such as dossiers, brochures, or evaluations.

Change is a living process. If we nourish this process, new practices can spread and establish themselves in the long run.