Enabling participation, encouraging self-empowerment and supporting lifelong learning: for many years cultural education has been a high priority for the BFDK.

Cultural education is a cross-sectional task for the BFDK. One milestone is the BFDK project “tanz + theater machen stark” (dance + theatre make you strong) started in 2013. In it, children and young people from situations of social and economic risk can learn about contemporary practices from the independent performing arts and try them out. The project is funded by the federal programme “Kultur macht stark. Bündnisse für Bildung” (Culture Makes You Strong: Alliances for Education); the third funding phase will begin in 2023.    

Which funding instruments can stakeholders in the independent performing arts access for cultural education? What understanding of cultural education are each federal states’ funding criteria based on? Which challenges do individual stakeholders, state associations, administrations, schools and educators encounter in this area? The study “Freie darstellende Künste und Kulturelle Bildung im Spiegel der bundesweiten Förderstrukturen” (The Independent Performing Arts and Cultural Education in Nationwide Funding Structures) commissioned by the BFDK focuses on these questions. The study was carried out by Aron Weigl on behalf of the initiative EDUCULT – Denken und Handeln in Kultur und Bildung (Thinking and Doing in Culture and Education) and was published in 2018.      

The BFDK subsequently wrote a position paper on cultural education. The paper clearly identifies: cultural education is a fundamental component of the independent performing arts. After all, 60 per cent of individuals working in the independent performing arts work in this field! Kick-starting artistic processes and strengthening the freedom of the arts are shown to be central aspects of cultural education. The key terms mentioned are: holistic communication, self-empowerment, participation in artistic processes and lifelong learning.

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Current projects of the BFDK on cultural education