Create Your Own Title – The Big Linz09 School Project
Press conference, 7th May 2008
Linz09 in the Future“Fire Up the Faculty!”
What’s school going to be like in the future? Perhaps like a model being launched today by Linz09 in cooperation with Upper Austrian schools and artists from Austria and around the world. All types of schools throughout the Province of Upper Austria are participating in this major project being staged by the 2009 European Capital of Culture. But the accent isn’t on dance and theater; it’s on the schools themselves.
Play, fun and movement involving all the senses – these are the themes that teachers and artists will be exploring together with students at Upper Austrian schools in Spring 2009. The end result of these undertakings will be neither an imperative performance nor a consummated work of art; instead, the upshot will be enthusiasm and the joy of getting active. This is also conceived as the launch of a process that will hopefully be sustainable, and one that strengthens and encourages the human beings—youngsters and adults alike—that make up our school system.
An Idea with a Background. Kids attending elementary school today will be retiring at around 2060. No one can predict now what the world in which they will work is actually going to be like. But, in addition to information and skills, what they’re definitely going to need as adults is self-confidence and creativity. These qualities have to be aroused, fostered and sustained.
Student Bodies and Human Bodies. Most children have difficulty sitting still when they’re studying. The key to creativity is movement! This has been demonstrated by the results of the PISA Study, in which schools that offer enriched theater programs—for example, Wiesbaden, Germany—perform much better than average. Physical movement also enhances fitness for logical and mathematical thinking. At the same time, theatrical and dance performances help students learn to assume responsibility. They discover how to create successes that are not based exclusively on seeing things in terms of individual output.
Cultural Techniques as Tools. The school can create a space for joint efforts, teamwork and mutual support. Artists can help in viewing society and reality from different perspectives. Students’ encounters with complex, multi-layered forms of expression help them to overcome fears and to discover articulation possibilities, enhances self-confidence, flexibility and the capacity to assume personal responsibility, and enables youngsters to acquire social skills—all of which are in demand by employers.
Call for Input. Neither the participating artists nor the teachers have designated a title for this innovative “school work”; the students can select it themselves. On the Linz09 website, users can cast a vote for their favorites from now until the end of June 2008. This interactive participation is a first step towards identification with the process. The results will be made public at the start of the new school year.
The Project in Actual Practice. 30 groups of artists have been invited to intensively accompany the school processes. In teams of three, they will spend eight weeks working in parallel with teachers and students at three different schools. An artist team will be composed of a “lead artist” from the field of dance, theater or performance, an assistant and a volunteer—for instance, a young teacher or artist who wishes to gain know-how and experience within the framework of this project. At least two teachers from the respective school will also be accompanying the project.
A third of the protagonists are from Austria, a third have connections to Upper Austria, and a third are international artists. All display a high level of artistry.
At each of the three schools, the artist teams will be developing different projects, which can assigned to three categories:
1. Performance-oriented Projects – Type A
The artist team works together with one class at a particular school seven weeks long, two to three times a week during the 2008-09 school year. To make this possible, various subjects such as German, art, music and phys-ed will be scheduled in an uninterrupted sequence (block) and earmarked for work with the artist.
The eighth week of the workshop is strictly a project week, during which there’ll be no regular instruction; the class and team will work intensively on finalizing the project. The grand finale will be a performance before a live audience: in the school, at a venue nearby or in a theater.
2. Process-oriented Projects – Type B
Parallel to the performance-oriented project, the artist team will be conducting workshops several times a week at a second school in the region. In contrast to Type A, there won’t be a project week. The results of this work will be displayed in a less elaborate presentation form.
3. Continuing Professional Education-oriented Projects – Type C
In a third facility—preferably an elementary school—the team will be holding workshops to impart expert know-how to teachers, to encourage them to work with kids in the performing arts and to show teachers what a pleasure this can be.
Additional offerings from Linz09:
Fire Up the Faculty! In Types A and B, additional workshops will be offered for the entire faculty of a particular school.
Miss-Take: In cooperation with media classes, students will document the theatrical works themselves and produce short films on the subject of making mistakes. These clips will be posted online to make them publicly accessible.
Wrap-up Symposium: The highpoint of scholarly efforts accompanying “Create your own title! – The Big Linz09 School Project” is the concluding symposium. Experts in the field from Austria and other countries will be analyzing the project and elaborating on the theoretical background. This symposium will provide a forum for sharing experiences and networking. It is also meant as a sign of sustainability and a signal to carry on this effort to increasingly integrate the performing arts into school instruction. Over the longer term, this initiative—whose dimensions make it absolutely unique—ought to serve as a model for other Austrian provinces.
Utopian Working Conditions for a Role Model. Linz09 is coordinating and financing the work of the artists, getting schools and classes linked up in networks, and taking advantage of the unique opportunity afforded by this concept: to launch and encourage a process of sustainable development in the school system throughout the Province of Upper Austria and far beyond the borders of Linz.
The Goal behind the Idea: To transform the disdain that’s usually accorded to the school system into high esteem, and to get a positive feedback loop flowing among children, parents and teachers. This is Linz09’s mission in this effort to expand the place schools set aside for art and culture, and to make schools a dynamic force in the Capital of Culture initiative. Just as the future of schools and education is once again occupying the spotlight of our entire social discourse, Linz09 is making “Create your own title! – The Big Linz09 School Project” (working title) one of the centerpieces of its performing arts concept. A project with sustainability potential, one that links the present and the future, one that takes creativity and an understanding of culture to precisely those locations with the greatest potential and where the most future opinion leaders are to be found: our schools.
Details:
Quotes from the Project ManagersFrom Struwwelpeter to Hamlet
Project Principals / Artists / Producers
Schools registered for the big Linz09 school project
Aufruf zur Mitbestimmung
