Can you dance art?

For a 6th grade class at the Carl Schomburg School, the project week this year took place not at their school, but at the Neue Galerie. There, the children engaged in a somewhat different way with works of modern and contemporary art. They were guided by student teachers from the University of Kassel, who painted, danced and acted out the works of art with the children.

For example, the children wrote stories about the installation "Isola" by Mario Merz and developed play scenes from them. Another group invented a dance to the sculpture "Free object d8" by Antony Gormley. "The figure looks frightened, as if it were hiding under a table during an earthquake," is how one student described the sculpture.

The goal of the project, led by Prof. Dr. Verena Freytag of the University of Kassel, was to use creative processes to convey enjoyment of contemporary art and break down threshold fears. The Kassel artist Maja Oschmann supported the students with visual processes, and Valeska Weber from the Staatstheater Kassel led the "acting" group. The project ties in with the "Adventure Museum" idea of the Kassel Cultural Office to connect various players in cultural education.

This year's project was only possible thanks to the openness of the Neue Galerie's museum management. This is because children and students moved through the exhibition on extremely unfamiliar paths and ways, and so naturally caution was called for. Gesa Wieczorek, academic volunteer at the Neue Galerie, accompanied the project with great sympathy and provided support not only with background information on the works.