It’s about time

Intercultural dialogues about the time around 1500

After researching the work of the Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach together with two Berlin school classes and a kindergarten as well as artists in the project "Kick-off Cranach", one question emerged particularly strongly: How do Muslim viewers deal with Christian iconography? And how would they have perceived these paintings - 500 years ago?

To get to the bottom of this, we asked the question of how the mutual cultural exchange of the different world cultures took place in the 16th century. What had preceded it?

The concept

The basic idea was for children/young people, artists, scientists and educators to "go on a journey together". As a starting point, we chose six objects that can be said to have played a central role in the cultural exchange of the 16th century: The compass, the printing press, the Arabic numeral system, the carpet, spices and the clock.

Six groups of pupils from each class set out on different research journeys to gather knowledge and experience and finally to implement all their findings in various artistic processes during the project week with the artists. The result was the world game BASA.

The task of the project leaders was to offer the safest possible spaces for the children and artists. The following questions were always in the foreground:

• What do the children need?

• Where are the artists most empowered?

• How can we make the time of the so-called Renaissance as vivid as possible for the children?

• How can we bring out the different perspectives of the cultures in a way that is as neutral as possible?

• How can we all benefit from the diversity and multilingualism in both classes?

The way we work
Our way of working followed clear structures that could be applied again and again, but it was also strongly process- and needs-oriented in order to offer time and space for the children's urgent questions. In the first phase of getting to know each other, it was therefore important for us to work out the concerns and wonderings of each class and set priorities accordingly.

The central theme in both classes was the confrontation with their own personalities and origins, albeit with a different focus in each class. Therefore, we decided to go different ways with the two classes:

With the 6th grade of the Lemgo primary school, we mostly stayed on campus and followed their individual wishes and themes, which we placed in the context of the history of the 16th century. The pupils particularly liked the game "World Travel" and in the course of the project we decided not to work on an "artist's book" as planned, but on a self-developed "world travel game" according to the children's wishes. With the 5th grade of the Charlie Chaplin Primary School, we had more excursions to follow the traces of the objects in small groups. Again and again, individual pupils found references to their own roots and thus received good feedback from their classmates. Since 19 different countries of origin were represented in the class, we were also able to follow their networks 500 years ago.

The Game

The "BASA World Game: A Journey into the 16th Century" (game board, 60 knowledge cards, 10 game pieces, universities, trading cities, BASA game money) can be rented from Ephra.

Artists & Experts
Ada Labahn, Cecilia Müller-Stahl, Tom Lange, Secil Honeywill, Katrin Greiling, Hazem Nasreddine, Lucie Nichelmann, Jürgen Kerber, Lea Hopp, Jessica Backhaus, Johannes Leistner, Katharina Wimmer

Research trips (institutions)
German Museum of Technology Berlin (with printing workshop), Ethnological Museum - National Museums in Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art - National Museums in Berlin, Buchstabenmuseum e.V., Kochatelier Ratatouille, Moira Seba, Jan Kath, Design Teppichladen

Time period: december 2014 to june 2015
project management: Petra Larass, Rebecca Raue, Jenny Sréter
Implementation: Petra Larass, Rebecca Raue, Jenny Sréter
Educational institutions: Lemgo-Grundschule, Charlie-Chaplin Grundschule
Partner: Berliner Projektfonds Kulturelle Bildung