Kunst-Stück – Robert Bosch Stiftung Supports Creative Partnerships between Primary Schools, Kindergartens and Cultural Institutions in Baden-Württemberg

Stuttgart, 27 November 2007. Aesthetic education will no longer be the exception in Baden-Württemberg. “Kunst-Stück”, Robert Bosch Stiftung’s first initiative to promote creativity in kindergartens and primary schools, has won the support of the state of Baden-Württemberg and Akademie Schloss Rotenfels, a further education institute for aesthetic educators in Baden-Württemberg. Under the new initiative, 36 joint projects between educational and cultural institutions will receive an average of 15,000 euros in funding for a period of two years. The official launch takes place on 30 November at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

Creativity is the key to personal and social innovation.
Until now, too little has been done to encourage creativity in education in general and specifically in pre-school institutions. Aesthetic education is ideally suited to teaching creative skills. “Kunst-Stück” seeks to make creativity and aesthetic education a natural part of educational life and a fixed component of the kindergarten and school curriculum. It motivates teachers to develop children’s creativity in partnership with artists and other creative professionals like architects, academics, craftspeople and designers, who will work alongside them, acting as momentum givers and skills trainers. The project is to eventually produce schools and kindergartens with arts curricula.

The possibilities are vast, with all branches of the arts represented in the sponsored projects. The youngsters will get to develop plays with actors and directors, while two projects offer children under the age of three an elementary experience of music, rhythm and movement. Schools pupils will become architects, using computers to design a village in the grounds of their school, and learn different crafts, such as carpentry and sculpting.

Commenting on the initiative, Dr. Ingrid Hamm, Director of the Robert Bosch Stiftung Board of Management, said: “Creativity is especially important in work that is concerned with discovering new solutions and new cultural achievements. And as a personal skill, it plays a decisive role in shaping a successful life.” Dr. Hamm continued: “We possess a significantly higher degree of creativity as children than in later life. We need to develop this creativity in everyday education, and ensure that preschool education already fosters creativity.”

Dr. Hamm sees the involvement of Akademie Schloss Rotenfels in the program as a particular stroke of fortune. School and nursery teachers will train together with artists at the institute twice a year, a groundbreaking cooperation that presents a challenge for both. Artists will learn how to adapt their work to this age group and deal with conflict situations, while teachers will experiment with art as a way of imparting knowledge and skills to children.