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Start of the Education and Outreach Project HERE WE ARE! on the Museumsinsel Berlin

09.07.2018
Museumsinsel Berlin

On 9 July 2018, HERE WE ARE! kicks off a large-scale education and outreach project by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin on the Museumsinsel Berlin. The project forms part of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s initiative Kultur macht stark: Bündnisse für Bildung (With Culture Comes Strength: Educational Alliances) and is funded by the Deutsches Museum’s activity programme Von uns für uns! Die Museen unserer Stadt entdeckt (For Us, By Us! The Museums of Our City Uncovered).

This funding allows the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin to implement a total of 20 education and outreach programmes dealing directly with the Museumsinsel Berlin over the next two years. What relevance does the Museumsinsel have for children and teenagers? What connections can be drawn between the everyday reality of young people and the historical treasures of world heritage in the heart of Berlin? Children and teenagers are called upon to engage with the objects, themes and architecture of the museums on the island, and to contribute their own perspectives.

“We’re delighted about the support for the project HERE WE ARE!”, says Heike Kropff, Head of the Department of Education/Communication at the Sattatliche Museen zu Berlin. “Together with children’s and youth organisations, we aim to develop formats and methods that provide children and young people with an on-going connection to art and culture. We try to base these efforts upon the interests of our young participants, and to provide them with space and visibility on the Museumsinsel Berlin.”

HERE WE ARE! carries on from CRACK THE CODE! – a project that was likewise aimed at children and young people whose social milieu offers few points of connection with the museum as an institution, and which ran from 2014 to 2017. Broken down into 40 smaller projects, participants were tasked with producing subjective connections between objects in different collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, thus uncovering new, diverse points of access to the collections.

HERE WE ARE! likewise incorporates multiple institutions: in groups, children and teenagers explore the Bode-Museum, the Neues Museum, the Pergamonmuseum, the Alte Nationalgalerie and the Altes Museum. They decide on the perspectives they apply to the collections and the architecture over the course of the project. They are provided with specially designed didactic material, such as the “tool box”. The groups are supported on site by art education staff and social workers.

For HERE WE ARE!, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin is cooperating with the Internationaler Bund, IB Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH, Landesjugendwerk im AWO Landesverband Berlin e. V., Moabiter Ratschlag e.V., Mädchen-Kultur-Treff Dünja, Pesta-lozzi-Fröbel-Haus, the Stiftung des öffentlichen Rechts, the Stiftung SPI and Haus der Jugend.

Education and Outreach at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The Education, Outreach, and Visitor Services Department is the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s central educational institution, responsible for designing and implementing the special events on offer at all 15 of our collections. Boasting a diverse programme of events, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin endeavours to attract users from a wide variety of groups: children and families; young people and adults; pre-school day-care centres, schools, universities, and other educational institutions; individual visitors and tour parties.