Can institutions learn (to get going)?

Today more than ever, cultural institutions need new perspectives and initiatives to offer a resonance space for contemporary issues and concerns. Introducing co-creative processes at all levels, for example, has the potential to strengthen young cultural citizens in their right to participate. At the KinderKunstLabor’s annual symposia, pertinent ideas, experiences, and specialist discourses are put up for discussion in a laboratory setting for plotting out new approaches and experiments. An exhibition tour at the beginning of the symposium stimulates questions around curating, art mediation, and exhibition strategies in the spirit of an art for all.

On 21 and 22 November 2024, the KinderKunstLabor will organise its first international symposium in cooperation with EDUCULT Vienna under the title Can Institutions Learn (to get going)? The conference venue is the KinderKunstLabor and the surrounding Altoona Park located between the city centre and the cultural district in St. Pölten, Lower Austria.

The symposium is dedicated to the learning institution, a much-discussed topic in the cultural sector. How can learning processes unfold within the institution? What conditions are needed to do so? And which new perspectives and mindsets can such learning processes stimulate in art institutions?

Together with the upcoming specialist publication of the same name, Can Institutions Learn (to get going)? will explore the potentials of networking, knowledge transfer, and the links between theory and practice in art institutions. The invited speakers provide insights into innovative research approaches and their respective institutions: underlying concepts, ongoing projects, specific targets, and future plans – but also the challenges and obstacles. The symposium is centred on the contribution by the first Researcher-in-Residence (August 2023 to February 2024), Anahita Neghabat, a social anthropologist, artist, and activist. In her lecture Let the Material Lead! Co-Creation through Methodological Diversity at the KinderKunstLabor, Anahita Neghabat presents excerpts and results from her research project.

Invited contributors: Sepake Angiama (Institute for International Visual Arts, London), Muhammet Ali Baş (Tangente St. Pölten Festival for Contemporary Culture), Johanna Bernkopf (KinderKunstLabor), Tom Braun (International University Cologne), Veronika Ehm (EDUCULT Vienna), Andreas Hoffer (Kunsthalle Krems), Mona Jas (KinderKunstLabor), Matthias Pacher (cultural education NÖKU), Emily Pringle (practical research in art museums), Julien Segarra (KinderKunstLabor),  Eva Maria Stadler (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Leanne Turvey & Alice Walton (Tate Modern & Tate Britain), Aron Weigl (EDUCULT Vienna), Andrea Zsutty (ZOOM Children’s Museum Vienna), among others.