Lecture Series on Arts, Cultures, Policies & Educational Practices #9

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.

*glocal = global-local

Thursday, February 17, 2022:

Lecture: People Theatre: Journeying through Experiences of Critical Awareness and Consciousness-raising

Speaker: Pepetual Mforbe

This lecture explores the concept of People Theatre, concentrating on its impact on marginalised communities and individuals. The conceptualization of the theatre facilitator as a mediator between the workshop participants, the performance, and the audience is critical to the People Theatre process as it underscores the entire project of social transformation. People Theatre workshops that have taken place in communities in Cameroon and Germany demonstrated how the practice has made meaningful impact on conscientisation.

Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong is Assistant Professor of African Literatures and Cultures at the Institute of Asian and African Studies in the Department of African Studies, Humboldt University Berlin. The main focus of her scientific research lies in African Performative Arts in relation to postcolonial literatures, Theatre for Development, People Cinema and the representations of old age in African theatre and Performance. She is a member and executive board of the African Theatre Association (AfTA).

Lecture: From the “art of places” to “the place of art”: decolonization of culture and development of a transcultural dialogue

Speaker: Paul Henri Souvenir Assako Assako

In the Cameroonian artistic context, it strongly appears that the success of artistic education depends on two main levers: on the one hand, re-establishing the historical link of the endogenous artistic experience in current society and on the other hand, finding the modalities which lead art to fit into the vision of sustainable development to which contemporary society aspires. Our contribution consists in presenting some intuitions of practices which took these levers into account in the realization of some original artistic and cultural projects promoted by the private sector and international cooperation programs in Cameroon.

Paul-Henri Souvenir Assako Assako is Head of the Fine Arts and Art History Section at the University of Yaoundé 1 in Cameroon. He is also Director of Libre Académie des Beaux-arts (LABA) in Douala, an academy of arts and design. His research focuses on the study of visual arts from the 20th century onwards in Africa. He has conducted cooperation projects with international partners, curated exhibitions and organised conferences on Art and Creativity for Sustainable Development.

More information about the event can be found here.

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