Art in schools

The basic idea of our project is to introduce children and young people to the art of painting in a quiet, unobtrusive, random way. The emphasis is on aesthetic perception. Aesthetics as the doctrine of beautiful and purposeless design has its own value, independent of economic usability. This, too, is an educational mission: to take time for the perception of purpose-free beauty. Every child, every young person needs time for themselves, for their vital need for purposeless spaces and moments, in the middle of their everyday life, which is determined by speed and effectiveness. It is precisely this need that our project wants to meet.

Almost everyone remembers a picture from his childhood - in his grandmother's or his neighbour's apartment - which he has grown fond of and which he still remembers today with all its details. The fact that people involuntarily turn their attention to their immediate surroundings should be used to give children the opportunity to familiarize themselves with paintings.

To do this, they don't have to go to an exhibition or a museum, but art changes direction and comes to them in their school. They can see the details in a painting by Monet or Klee while waiting in front of the music room for their teacher or standing in line in the cafeteria.

The target group of this project are students of all school types from first grade to graduation. They are to come into contact with well-known paintings from past centuries, from antiquity to contemporary art.

In the long term, the children absorb art, recognize it, take an interest in it and lose their fears of contact. In the short term, the school environment also gains in beauty through the design and embellishment of the building with works of art.

Perhaps art will even gain a place in their lives and in their hearts and will give some children the courage to deal with things that go beyond their everyday lives, which are determined by speed and effectiveness, in our information and media age. Perhaps a change of direction here, too?

We are very pleased that we supportet by Christiane Heuwinkel and subsequently Felicitas von Richthofen from the Kunsthalle Bielefeld as contact persons for the project.

We started our project at the following four Bielefeld pilot schools in 2013/2014: Stiftsschule, Westkampschule LWL-Förderschule Förderschule Förderschwerpunkt Hören und Kommunikation, Gesamtschule Rosenhöhe and Max-Planck-Gymnasium.

In the following school year the Stapenhorstschule, the Friedrich-v.-Bodelschwingh-Gymnasium, the Schule am Kupferhammer and the Kuhlo-Realschule participated.

The Andreas Mohn Foundation provides each school with a thematically related exhibition of six paintings as framed art prints.

We discuss the selection of the paintings with the schools and together with them select an exhibition location in the school that is particularly suitable and makes the paintings easily accessible for as many pupils as possible.

We are particularly pleased about the openness and spontaneous enthusiasm for the project idea that we have experienced with all those to whom we have presented art in schools so far. Let us show the children and young people that there are other things than just effective, economic functioning in everyday life and that people care about them, take them seriously and strive to make their world more beautiful and worth living in, simply more human.

No school is like any other and every picture of our project is unique, just like the children and young people for whom we do this project!