TUSCH Berlin
TUSCH is a network of cultural education with a total of 122 Berlin schools (as of January 2011) and over 40 Berlin theaters , which initiates three-year partnerships between one school and one theater and supports them in terms of content, organization and finance.
The focus is on the cooperation between students and theater artists and thus the opportunity for the young people to get to know the theater business in all its diversity: both concrete stage events, individual staging processes and preliminary dramaturgical work, as well as the technical-technical areas, public relations and organizational processes. The pupils develop their artistic, social and cognitive skills through direct experience. The aim is to anchor the medium of theater intensively and sustainably in schools and to promote art and culture as an integral part of comprehensive education. On the other hand, TUSCH opens up encounters with young people and their experiences for artists, from which they can get impulses for their artistic activities.
history
The network was developed and implemented in 1998 by Renate Breitig , the then advisor for theater and aesthetic education in the Berlin Senate Department for Education. Initially with twelve theaters and one school each, she created solid partnerships. The aim of the project was to anchor cultural education in school programs.
The partnership with TUSCH brought the participating theaters the experience that a well-founded mediation of theatrical art by specialists was a benefit for the institution. In 1998 only one theater in Berlin outside the circle of children and youth theaters employed a theater pedagogue, while in the meantime no large stage has done without a theater pedagogical department.
In 1999 the first TUSCH festival took place in the FEZ Wuhlheide youth culture center, the second followed in 2000 in the Berliner Ensemble . The circle of TUSCH partners had meanwhile grown to 22 schools and 19 theaters. From 2001 to 2006 the TUSCH festival week was held in the youth culture center “Pump”. Today the TUSCH festival week takes place every March in the Podewil in Berlin-Mitte.
In 2002 the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, took over the patronage of TUSCH.
Since 2003 there has been a cooperation agreement between the respective heads of the school, the theater and TUSCH. The core of every partnership is a staging project, financed by TUSCH since 2004, which is designed and carried out independently by the partners (schoolchildren, theater makers and educators). The developed performance can be presented to the public at the TUSCH festival week. In addition, theater workshops and extra projects are offered as leisure activities for schoolchildren. The TUSCH Theater Day, a regular theater visit by the students, has been part of the program since 2000.
The circle of TUSCH partnerships has grown steadily since it was founded. 40 schools are currently cooperating with 35 theaters in partnerships, a total of 122 schools have been and are active at TUSCH since the beginning (as of January 2011).
In 2008, as part of the tenth anniversary of TUSCH, a symposium on "TUSCH as a model project" took place for active and interested parties from all professions and federal states to exchange experiences and ideas on the subject of: cultural education within the framework of cooperation between schools and cultural institutions.
In 2009, the management of TUSCH Berlin passed to Ursula Jenni and Katrin Behrens. Together they managed the project office established in 2008 in Podewil Berlin-Mitte, which, with its connected theater space, is an ideal center for the TUSCH network. Since September 2012, Dr. Lena Blessing project manager at TUSCH Berlin.
Partnerships
The main field of action is the mediation and promotion of three-year partnerships between a school and a theater of different genres and levels. The aim is to bring the pupils into contact with stage art, the theater as an art location and the charms of artistic and aesthetic engagement with topics of our time in a variety of ways. TUSCH brings cooperation partners together and supports corresponding projects with subsidies for fee and material costs.
The TUSCH team accompanies the projects, provides feedback and an exchange of experiences throughout the network. All schools that have participated in a partnership since TUSCH was founded can regularly benefit from TUSCH's cultural offers.
The core project
Each year of the project, students and teachers usually work on a production with the artists . The topics for this are developed jointly by the partners. The resulting theater productions are diverse in terms of content, form and aesthetics. They reflect the diversity of the Berlin theater landscape and the different approaches of artists, students and teachers to the tasks set. Classics, self-written scenes, performative performances, collages and narrative theater are staged . The productions will be presented to the school, in the partner theater and as part of the TUSCH festival week in March on the stage of the Podewilschen Palais.
TUSCH supports cooperation partners in the design of projects, joint visits to presentations and rehearsals, parent information events in the theater or teacher workshops for artists.
Pilot project cooperation culture
Under the title "Cooperation Culture - Conflict Resolution System (s) for TUSCH Partnerships", three students of the advanced training Masters "Mediation, Conflict Research and Implementation of Constructive Conflict Resolution Systems " at the zak Basel (center for agogik GmbH) turned to TUSCH Berlin as a research field. The TUSCH cooperation network offers an appropriate breadth and interesting variety for this.
The research group has set itself the goal of examining the stumbling blocks and conditions for success of cooperation under the special conditions of a TUSCH partnership. The experiences, needs and interests of the TUSCH partners were recorded in interviews and discussion groups. In particular, the talks and shared experiences in the initial phase were given high priority by the actors. Both sides would also like to use the innovative potential of the partnerships and the network and derive their individual added value from them.
The pilot project “Cooperation Culture” will conclude in April 2011 with a large survey of those involved. The prospect of the research results is that three supporting aspects of the collaboration should be emphasized:
- Intensification of process support and exchange
- joint training opportunities
- Exchange with other TUSCH partnerships on a smaller scale.
TUSCH festival week
An annual theater festival in March is the highlight of the network: for a week, artistic results from 40 partnership projects are presented in the Podewilschen Palais in Berlin-Mitte - over 1000 students are actively involved.
Additional projects
Twice a year, TUSCH organizes two-day theater workshops for primary school and secondary school students under the guidance of experienced theater people from the partner stages.
Follow-up projects
There are now TUSCH follow-up projects in seven cities and regions: TUSCH Hamburg , KLaTSch Saxony-Anhalt , TUSCH Frankfurt am Main , TUSCH Munich , TUSCH Stuttgart and TUSCH Minden (in foundation). The related project TISZ was launched in Warsaw .
Publications
- Monthly newsletter