Culture Agents for Creative Schools

An Initiative 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 “Culture 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.

The programme will commence in the 2011/2012 school year with 46 Culture Agents at 138 schools in Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia. Over a period of four years, the Culture Agents will collaborate with pupils, teachers, principals, parents, artists and cultural institutions in creating a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary cultural education programme and establishing long-term cooperative ventures between schools and cultural institutions. Each Culture Agent will supervise a local network of up to three schools.

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 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 schools should develop artistic projects in collaboration with regional cultural institutions and artists. They may apply for “Kunstgeld” [art funding] to finance their implementation. 

“Culture Agents for Creative Schools” is a programme of the non-profit Forum K&B GmbH, initiated and funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) and the Stiftung Mercator in Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia in cooperation with the respective ministries, the Bundesvereinigung für Kulturelle Kinder- und Jugendbildung e.V. (German Federation of Associations for Cultural Youth Education), conecco UG - Management städtischer Kultur (conecco - Management for Urban Culture) and the Deutsche Kinder- und Jugendstiftung (German Children and Youth Foundation).

"Culture Agents for Creative Schools” is a model cultural education project with a superregional and national impact. The initiative adopts an innovative and exemplary approach unlike any other in Germany that goes beyond the scholastic framework. Both the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Stiftung Mercator have allocated 10 million euros each to fund the programme “Culture Agents for Creative Schools” from 2010 to 2016. All the participating states have pledged to co-finance the programme and are closely involved in its implementation.