Nobody is an Island

Why personal exchange is irreplaceable

2009 marked the 20th jubilee of cultural education with apprentices in Austria. Originally developed and supervised by “Team Eigenart/Museum” and the "Büro für Kulturvermittlung" (Office for Cultural Education), the programme was taken over by KulturKontakt Austria (KKA) in 2004 and has been an important field of activity of the organisation ever since. The so-called K3 Programme takes the dual system of vocational education and training (apprenticeship in a company plus compulsory vocational school) as a starting point and supplements it with cultural education projects. Participating apprentices, such as prospective carpenters or retail salespersons, are given the opportunity to exchange ideas about cultural subjects with professional artists.

The structure of the programme is complex, since it requires good cooperation and coordination at several levels. After all, in a K3 project, artists and cultural educators work together with apprentices who are involved in practical training with a business enterprise in addition to attending daytime courses at a vocational school.

In recent years, flexible teams, usually coordinated by one person, have been put together in the Austrian provinces. This ensures, for instance, that the projects can take place at various different schools and that regional needs and conditions are taken into account. The continuity of these teams in combination with their openness for new impulses guarantees that high standards of quality are maintained in the projects offered.

Despite the wide variety of different projects, the respective project leaders are often confronted with similar issues and challenges. In order to give them an opportunity for exchange, KKA organises network meetings – and these have shown that sometimes just knowing that other people face similar problems can be helpful.

A similar approach is being taken in the initiative “Cultural Education with Schools at Federal Museums 2010”, for which the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture provides the funding and KKA provides advice and assistance. Here KKA organises meetings for the heads of the education departments at all the federal museums and the persons in charge of the various projects, as well as a network conference. Even though some participants feel that these meetings take too much time, this criticism is outweighed by the positive aspects of the reciprocal exchange. The three meetings held so far have focussed not only on the discussion of specific issues, such as how to work with museum visitors who speak little German, but also on the empowerment of the education teams in the individual museums. Thus, these meetings also took advantage of the attention that the education initiative has brought to bear on this area of activity, in order to deal with internal issues, create alliances and also initiate the future implementation of inter-museum projects that will strengthen cultural education at museums as a whole.

KKA, Editorial Staff

www.kulturkontakt.or.at/K3
www.kulturkontakt.or.at/bundesmuseen