60 Years OeAD: The “One Million Euro Baby” – how art comes to the classroom

9. December 2021 OeAD60KulturvermittlungSchool
Children standing in two rows opposite each other throw colorful pigments into the air. All of them are full of color.
Art and culture have lonely times behind them – and probably also ahead of them. Because both the young and the old were only able to dedicate little time to the muse. Yet they need her creativity, her expression, her sharpening of the senses more than ever.

This is why the OeAD connects artists and their work with schools through the cultural education initiative Kultur:Bildung, thus offering the most comprehensive cultural education programme with schools in the whole of Austria. Thanks to online workshops art can also come to classrooms during these times.

This initiative was developed by the OeAD, which as national education agency is also responsible for its implementation. The initiative is financed by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF). One million euros is available for the school year 2021/22! Within the framework of project-oriented teaching pupils of all ages can work together (also at short notice) with artists of all disciplines – from dance, theatre, music and literature to visual arts, film, video, media art, photography, design and architecture. The motto is: stimulating and participatory, analogue and digital.

Cultural education and digital media

The OeAD provides financial support for the fees of creative artists and advises teachers and creative artists on all aspects of cooperation. Particularly good news for the arts: with the new initiative “Kultur:Bildung”, which will replace the “School Culture Budget” and “Dialogue Events” initiatives as of 2021, the artists’ remuneration will be increased.

As in the previous year, the initiative will focus on the theme More than Bytes – Cultural Education and Digital Media in the school year 2021/22. The acquisition of (digital) media skills is also to go hand in hand with the 8-point plan for digital teaching.

Virtual spaces and avatars – platform “Offers for creative artists”

The platform “Offers for creative artists” offers a wide variety of workshops and online workshops. We will present an excerpt from it and an overview of the range of supported online workshops here:

A majority of offers is available in the area of “Digital Media”. We particularly recommend the workshop “Augmented Minds”, in which pupils will use videos and images to create a surreal story that is to be presented as augmented reality using apps.

In the workshop “Performative Practices in the Digital Field” the pupils will question their own self-portrayal on digital platforms and get to know them anew in a playful, performative way.

The format “Face to Face?” addresses the topic of faces in the digital space – from facial recognition to the creation of one's own facial avatar for a fictitious passport.

The architecture course “Space Properties” shows how pupils recreate their real or imagined favourite place and form a collective, social living space out of it.

Dance, Theatre and Zoombies

If your pupils prefer to move to music, we recommend one of the dance workshops. The online course “Modern Dance Online/Ocine/Live – we're trying something new”, for example, experiments with modern dance, urban dance and digital media.

The theatre workshop “Zoombie Stories – the computer as a stage” shows the pupils what makes a good story and how to use different online tools for it.

Let´s get started!

Submissions can also be made at short notice until the end of 2021 and do not have to meet the original 6-week deadline!

All information: oead.at/kulturBildung

Author: Florian Wörgötter