young bauhaus: Why young perspectives are important
The museum education project “young bauhaus“ offers young people a platform to express themselves artistically. In the following, Leah Pfeifer, community service volunteer at the Bauhaus-Archiv from September 2023 to September 2024, reports on the project and how it integrates young viewpoints.
Staring for several minutes at someone you’ve just met is something that would make anyone uncomfortable, but that’s exactly how the first young bauhaus meeting begins. Sitting in pairs, each scans the face of the person across from them. Meanwhile, pens flit across the paper as we draw each other’s portraits – glancing down at the page is forbidden.
young bauhaus is an education project which community service volunteers Kato and Luisa started in early 2023. Since then, young art enthusiasts meet every Wednesday at the temporary Bauhaus-archive to discuss ideas and collaborate on artistic projects. The portrait exercise was our first encounter – now we’re a group.
Why young? Why bauhaus?
young bauhaus is about providing young people a platform and the resources they need to express themselves creatively. That’s why young bauhaus is specifically targeted at teenagers and young adults. It also offers the archive’s community service volunteers and interns a platform to try out new ideas and formats. Because the young bauhaus project team changes every year with the arrival of new community service volunteers, each new team has the opportunity to re-interpret, revise and expand on this fundamental idea.
The historic Bauhaus was a school that pushed the boundaries of art and design with experimental approaches and new ideas which remain as forward-thinking as ever. We have embraced this fundamental idea as our own by creating a place where new ideas can happen and take shape. We’re neither trying to conjure the historic Bauhaus back to life nor convey concretely historical knowledge. But thematically, we are focused on art, design and architecture, as well as the social issues that interest us as a group.
Who are we in 2023/24?
Equipped with several posters, flyers and a yellow balloon, Lisa (responsible for accessibility and diversity), Safaa (the second community service volunteer) and I make our way to a first-semester event at the Berlin University of the Arts in hopes of recruiting participants for our project. As of November 2023, the second round of young bauhaus was set to begin with a new team.
In the following weeks, we shared our calls to participate in WhatsApp groups and through our personal contacts. We also reached out to participants of the past year and advertised young bauhaus at our museum education projects. The young designer Djamal agreed to accompany our project team as an external member.
This allowed us to reach people who do not belong to the usual visitors of the Bauhaus-Archiv. Every so often, very different people from all walks of life show up at our weekly meetings.
Community service volunteers, students, young professionals – all the participants of young bauhaus have a unique connection to art. Some study it at university, others have made it their professions, while others create art in their free time. Most of them seem to be “in between” different phases of their lives.
It was important for us to establish a group of committed members. This proved initially difficult because of the fluctuating numbers of participants. But after the arrival of the new intern Sonja in April 2024, we became a fixed group of 15 members.
Methods and everday life
Large rolls of paper, a collection of zines, old exhibition catalogues and dismembered Barbie dolls – since the beginning of the year, Safaa and I have been collecting a variety of items on our desk in the office above the temporary bauhaus-archiv. As Wednesday afternoon gets closer, we start lugging these objects from the first floor to the exhibition area on the ground floor to prepare for young bauhaus and welcome the first participants. For many of them, our meeting takes place after a long day at work or the university. So we make sure to create a relaxed atmosphere and begin most meetings with playful exercises and background music.
The project is designed to encourage participants to act as a group, which is why many of our meetings focus on brainstorming ideas and making decisions together.
Sometimes we spend the whole meeting sitting together discussing matters at two sets of double tables. At other meetings, we focus on more practical work – tattooing Barbies, drawing cookies, making posters, folding zines and crafting pieces of linoleum. And on other days, we explore the exhibition room and visit other exhibitions in Berlin.
Takeover – The exhibition
Meeting #25 – young bauhaus crowds around a rather small coffee table. On a rather untidy looking A3 sheet of paper, little green Post-It notes with names are plucked and moved around as if we were deciding on the seating arrangement for a very meticulously planned wedding. The decision to establish young bauhaus as a group with fixed membership allows us in the end to plan long-term joint projects with a concrete goal.
Consequently, half of our young bauhaus meetings since the beginning of May have been full of questions and discussions regarding concepts and headlines, invitations, interior design, event planning, music and guests. We’re planning an exhibition, and instead of only meeting behind closed doors every Wednesday afternoon, we’ll be presenting the works we’ve made for the first time to the general public around the end of August. For this purpose, we’ll be taking over the exhibition area of the temporary bauhaus-archiv for four weeks starting on 29 August.
Not only does this offer us the rare chance to present our works as creative artists with hardly any or no credentials to speak of, but also the possibility to learn from one another and broaden our horizons through a large-scale project.
In the exhibition we present various pieces which explore the topic of identity. Instead of planning a rigid seating arrangement for a wedding, we’re planning a fragile dialogue of different ideas in an exhibition space. We’ll see how it goes.