Art Education – inter-culturally

Two groups of students and one month of intensive cooperation in a difficult situation on the ground in Armenia, due to the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The third part of Art Education – inter-culturally began with a rescheduling of the project, which required a great deal of flexibility from everyone involved. This challenge, however, leads us directly to crucial questions of intercultural work in a situation marked by conflict, also for the students involved: What are the challenges of project planning in a politically uncertain situation? How do we create a space of trust in which we can all ask personal questions, so that everyone feels safe? And how do we handle the fact that Swiss and Armenian students generally have very different experiences of dealing with conflict situations?

So the project started months before the actual project cycle with regular online meetings before we finally got to the heart of the project: educational questions, getting to know different school systems and their challenges, the work in intercultural groups to prepare school lessions. 

In both parts of the project our home base was a project space – in Basel the FoodCultureLab of the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel and in Yerevan room 202 of the Armenian State Pedagogical University. From there we went to teach in various schools in Basel and Yerevan. In both cities we additionally visited a wide range of cultural institutions.

How does art teaching work in Georgia and what are its primary goals? What does the everyday school life of art teachers in Switzerland look like and what are its challenges? The second edition of Kulturelle Bildung – Inter-kulturell is an exchange between art education students from Switzerland and Georgia. It began in October 2022 with a two-week workshop in Tbilisi. A workroom at Ilia State University served as a “home base” where the 18 students and four accompanying lecturers, half from Switzerland and half from Georgia, got to know each other. From here, they attended art lessons in public and private schools and prepared their own lessons, which they then held in mixed teams at state school no. 5 in Tbilisi. Visits to cultural institutions and universities in Tbilisi completed the full programme. Impressions that remained with the Swiss participants were the enormous commitment of Georgian teachers who achieve so much with so few resources; the huge difference between public and private schools; and an interesting reorientation of the Georgian curricula, which reflects the country’s desire to approach to the EU.

The second part of the exchange, the return visit of the Georgian participants to their Swiss colleagues, was hosted by the Lucerne School of Art and Design (HSLU) in February 2023. Here, too, the focus of the programme was on school observations, joint lesson preparation and trial lessons at the Alpenquai Cantonal School. However, there was also enough time for personal exchange, and the lecturers and students from Lucerne showed the Georgians and their Swiss colleagues around their university, city and museums. Many participants were inspired by the city’s high standard of museum education. In the evening, they cooked together in a kitchen at the art academy. An exuberant celebration, including Georgian dancing, marked the end of the intensive time together.

After a COVID-19-induced postponement, we are finally getting started! In February 2022, we welcomed nine students and two lecturers from the Armenian State Pedagogical University for a two-week workshop in Zurich. Together with art education students from Basel (FHNW), Lucerne (HSLU) and Zurich (ZHdK), they visited art classes in the cantonal schools of Baden and Bülach and gained insights into the work of museum education in the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Stapferhaus Lenzburg. Then, in groups of four, the students prepared their own lessons and delivered them to the students at the cantonal school in Bülach. Their lecturers observed the classes and gave feedback. Two moments of this workshop were particularly memorable: The first was the contribution of Kulturagent*innen, who brought their intervention in Swiss schools to life in the shape of a live performance; The second was the evening when the Armenian students presented their alphabet and its history at the Literaturhaus Zurich. Both were a success! 
The nine Swiss students then travelled to Armenia in March 2022. Lecturers from Tbilisi and Sukhum/i joined the Armenian-Swiss group and all moved into a working room at the Armenian State Pedagogical University. The Armenian lecturers invited the participants to typical classes, which included carpet design and weaving, and sculpture. Moreover, museum visits introduced the students to the country's rich culture. Still, the focus of the programme was on school visits and joint lesson preparation, upon which the students built knowledge in preparation for holding their own. Our partner schools were located in Yerevan and Charenstavan. The cross-cultural teamwork necessary for these lessons proved an important learning experience for all participants. A blog was created that contains the students' impressions.