Future Shapers

How Parts and culture shape society

What kind of society do we want to live in? Cultural education opens up spaces where young people can rediscover their surroundings, raise their own questions, search for answers in a fun and creative way and express their views in public. Cultural education is education for the future.

Cultural education programmes are particularly important for children and young people who are disadvantaged by the education system and the cultural sector, who experience multiple forms of discrimination and who have no voice. They express their perspectives on topics relevant to the future, such as diversity, democracy, digitalisation and sustainability. The breadth of cultural education enables a variety of approaches to these future-oriented topics.

The practical guide offers suggestions for practitioners to reflect on their work relating to the future topics of diversity, democracy, digitalisation and sustainability and to enrich it with professional input. Tools provide concrete methods for cultural education work that can be used with children and young people to address these future topics. Projects from Aachen, Berlin, Freiburg, Leipzig and Hamburg from the BKJ funding programme ‘Künste öffnen Welten/Arts Open Worlds’ within the federal programme ‘Kultur macht stark. Bündnisse für Bildung/Culture Makes Strong. Alliances for Education’ provide insight into their practice of youth cultural work.

The practical guide includes articles by Kerstin Hübner on the contribution cultural education can make to a youth-centred future, by Prof. Dr. Sandra Hofhues on the future discourse with regard to digitalisation, by Ely-Almeida Rist on inclusive and discrimination-sensitive action strategies in working with young people, by Kirsten Witt on political and cultural education, and by Amanda Steinborn on the UN’s 17 sustainability goals in cultural education. The resource also includes interviews with Susanne Bücken, Dr. Helle Becker, Dr. Verena Holz, Bernardo Sanchez Lapuente, Christoph Richter, Prof. Dr. Benjamin Jörissen and four young people (Marie Borst, Nicolas Klasen, Olla Amoura and Fabian Müller), who talk about the issues close to their hearts, what they are committed to and what kind of future they want.

With more than 1,000 projects funded and around 25,000 children and young people involved since 2013, the BKJ’s ‘Künste öffnen Welten/Arts Open Worlds’ programme contributes to greater equality in education and participation. Since then, projects dealing with issues of empowerment, self-organisation and participation have been specifically funded. In 2020, the question of how these projects could also be implemented digitally came to the fore. This practical guide builds on all the experience gained from ‘Künste öffnen Welten/Arts Open Worlds’.

The original version in German can be found here: Zukunftsgestalter*innen. Mit Kunst und Kultur für die Gesellschaft aktiv.