Based on a practice research within an asylum seekers center, the project examines necessary structures and criteria for teaching offers among refugees. On one hand, the findings are introduced to the study branch of the BA Art Education that plans to offer recurring teaching formats with refugees. On the other, the current discourse on art pedagogy is developed. Thereby, the investigation of conditions and potentials of cultural education and art pedagogy situated between empowerment and limitation, change and affirmation, autonomy and subordination, is a major focus.
The research project “Teaching Offer with Rrefugees Within the BAE” is based on a practice research conducted within an asylum seekers’ center to examine necessary structures and criteria for teaching offers among refugees. On one hand, findings inform the study branch of the BA Art Education that plans to offer recurring teaching formats with refugees in cooperation with the federal asylum center inaugurated next to the Toni-Areal. On the other, the current discourse on art pedagogy is developed. By embedding insights of the practice research into the state of the art, not only a solid basis for teaching is created, but the need of research within this context is rendered visible. Thereby, the investigation of conditions and potentials of cultural education and art pedagogy situated between empowerment and limitation, change and affirmation, autonomy and subordination, is a major focus. The aim is to generate knowledge about specific understandings and designs of art pedagogy and cultural education in the context of flight and migration. This will enable relationships beyond nation-ethno-cultural ascriptions and monolingual, asymmetric structures.
Since a few years, cultural education takes on a key role when questions about democracy und «societal integration» are raised. Financial and structural resources are made available within educational as well as non-educational settings to enable cultural projects with refugees. However, structural frameworks determining who is paid, who decides and what all that is about, and frameworks related to content such as empowerment, remain all too often unreflected. Based on a team centered action research, the aim of this project is to generate knowledge that flows into teachings of the BAE. Simultaneously, this knowledge is implemented into the current discourse on art pedagogy. We, Hüseyin Büyüktas (coordinator of the open atelier) and a researcher pursue a practical and self-reflexive development of ourselves and our pedagogies on the micro-didactical, design-oriented level, as well as on the theoretical-discursive level.
The field of higher education, requires to question prevalent power relations within teaching formats with refugees and to ask, what entanglements are present. Thereby, it is important to understand and carefully weigh in the principles of a collaboration with people living in an asylum center. This, in order to enable decolonial and empowering practices.