ART SPECIAL: aims to facilitate both the making of art with artists and the co-experience, or even, guidance, of art’s creative processes; involving children, young people and mature students—all in all an experience that transcends normal art lessons. Fine artists and musicians work in tandem with student sponsors. Student patrons prepare designing a Literary Room for the participating writers after having been duly inspired by their works and personalities. At the close of the communal art production session, the tour moves from school to school and to the leisure youth centre facilities that have been transformed into temporary exhibition and sound venues.
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Networking and versatility of identities are the key ideas of this year’s edition of the art project, which has been taking place since 1996 at at the Hansa-Gymnasium a participating institution in the UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet) and is now being staged for the fifth time, although for the first time at several different sites. Twenty artists and teams of students from six institutions from the »Bildungslandschaft Altstadt Nord« (BAN) will embark upon an artistic dialogue, which began as follows: over fifty students from the Hansa-Gymnasium decided upon an artist to mediate the artist-student encounter, namely the exchange between the artists and the school group working with them from the participating institutions, but also between them and the teachers, parents, and organisers. This cooperative project involving seven educational establishments in the Cologne suburb of Altstadt Nord and sponsored by the Bonn benefactor Carl Richard Montag, is an experimental model on the part of the City of Cologne and the Montag Foundation “Jugend und Gesellschaft” [Youth and Society] as well as »Urbane Räume« [Urban Spaces].