Lecture Series on Arts, Cultures, Policies & Educational Practices #3

From September 2021 to February 2022, CAMP notes on education is running a series of lectures on Arts, Cultures, Policies, and Educational Practices. In nine online sessions, internationally renowned experts at the interface of Arts, Cultural Policy and Education will present their concepts and approaches. They will be talking about their research within their particular contexts. Through dialogue and knowledge-sharing, participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their own concepts, methods and practical experiences in the context of the upcoming documenta fifteen.

The curatorial approach of the artists’ collective ruangrupa is to locate art in people’s everyday lives and, with documenta fifteen, create a place for shared knowledge production. In line with this concept, the lecture series and its speakers will ask questions about the free and institutionalised spheres of arts and education. CAMP notes on education initiates a dialogue on the social and political factors that influence the emergence of artistic practice.

The series is organized in collaboration with the University of Hildesheim and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. The lectures will be moderated by students and held in English due to the presence of international speakers.

CAMP notes on education

CAMP notes on education is a glocal* network of teachers and learners in the fields of arts, arts history, aesthetics, cultural policy and arts education. CAMP uses the practice of lumbung as an opportunity to place the question of contemporary Arts Education in networked and global contexts. For example, what role does it play in relation to artistic and curatorial actors? How does it position itself in the current cultural policy discourse?

The contemporary practice of Arts Education needs new responses to translocal teaching and learning contexts. documenta fifteen should provide a framework for instigating structural change in these areas. lumbung allows CAMP participants to learn about new parameters for horizontal decision-making processes and resource allocation. In the coming weeks and months, CAMP will be working with a growing number of cooperation partners and networks to translate these values, rituals and organizational principles. It will be questioning the foundations and practices of Arts Mediation and looking for ways to learn in and from collectives.

With this focus, CAMP notes on education is constantly growing and opening up spaces for collective and project-based learning.

More information on CAMP notes on education can be found here.

*glocal = global-local

Thursday, October 28, 2021: Postcolonialism and Arts Education / Nonprofit-Organisations and sustainable regional development / The Belt and Road Initiative

Lecture 1: Postcolonialism and Arts Education: African Perspectives

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Samuel Ravengai

Arts education in Africa took a single Eurocentric perspective while alternative ways of knowing and artistic practice were side-lined if not ridiculed. In his lecture, Samuel Ravengai makes the point that each knowledge regime, albeit its deep embeddedness in institutional life, is contested within its own period by exploring African resistance to western artistic practice. Although the colonial knowledge regime leaves its traces in artistic practice, he makes the point that eventually it falls to a successor regime and in the case of artistic practice, to the emerging Afroscenology discourse. With regards to the latter, this lecture will discuss practical ways in which African ways of knowing and artistic practice have been and are being foregrounded in arts education and culture.

Samuel Ravengai is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is particularly interested in the interconnection of race, nation, empire, migration and ethnicity with cultural production. Samuel Ravengai is a postcolonial/decolonial scholar who propounded a new theory, Afroscenology, which seeks to suggest ways in which theatre can be documented, theorised and decolonised.

Lecture 2: Nonprofit-Organisations and sustainable regional development on the example of the Bulgarian ‘Chitalishte’

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Milena Valeva

This lecture introduces ‘chitalishte’, an alternative cultural institution which is historically anchored in Bulgaria. Although “chitalishte” is primarily state-funded institution, it does not refer to typical high culture institutions in Western Europe like theaters and museums. ‘Chitalishte’ has to be understood as a ‘cultural ecosystem’, aiming at socio-cultural and regional sustainability. It enables horizontal networking and stands for tradition as well as for innovation.

Milena Valeva is a multi-lingual professor in nonprofit management and sustainable regional development at Trier University of Applied Sciences. She is a founding member of the NGO Odyssey, a nonprofit organization for regional development in Bulgaria, and she is an expert group member of the Education4Justice Initiative on Integrity and Ethics Modules for Higher Education at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes. Milena Valeva also publishes in the field of sustainable development, social innovation and ethical banking.

Lecture 3: The Belt and Road Initiative: Contemporary Cultural Projects in China

Speaker: Yongfei Du

For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), cultures are the most important factors that impact economic growth, international trade, marketing, finance and politics. In a new era of governance, the Belt and Road Initiative (BR Initiative) was developed in 2013. For the CCP, cultures are the most important factors that impact economic growth, international trade, marketing, finance and politics. In this lecture, I will not only discuss the cultural values of the Chinese BR Initiative and the actual cultural projects within this foreign policy strategy but also address the questions ‘What is the central idea of Chinese cultural policy?’ and ‘What role does UNESCO play?’

Yongfei Du is an enthnomusicologist, working as a researcher and teacher at various German universities, currently Hildesheim and Hanover. Her main research interests include cultural heritage protection for Chinese music, music in the Chinese diaspora in Germany as well as the transition and hybridity processes of different Chinese music genres. Yongfei Du also founded the Chinese Children’s Choir in Berlin and has organized many international musical activities for Chinese and German universities.

Moderators

Michèle Brand and Prof. Dr. Julius Heinicke

This event will take place as part of the panel Variety of Narratives in (Inter)national Cultural Policy: A Comparison between Different Regions at a symposium of the University of Hildesheim. The lectures will be followed by a discussion on the opportunities and challenges for international organisations in negotiating different narratives explored in the previous presentations.

More information can be found on the website of CAMP notes on education.

Directions