concept – Kunstbus e.V.

An old fire truck was converted into a mobile studio, the art bus called “KUBU”.

We travel to places in Germany to work artistically with children and young people.

Our team of therapists and educators is dedicated to individual creative development.

The “KUBU” is mobile and can thus easily come into the natural living space of the children and work location-independently. In this way, we can also reach places where there have been few artistic offerings up to now and where there is a current need.

The art bus “KUBU” invites you to slow down and creates space for encounters with yourself and with others. It is a creatively filled artistic treasure trove with tools, materials and stimuli for all the senses.

A comparable concept is the art suitcase, have a look here: https://www.kunst-koffer.org/

Time frame

For the entire duration of the project, “KUBU” has its permanent location in Karlsruhe. However, it is ready for Germany-wide projects at any time.

The project will start as soon as the bus has been completed and is ready for use. The project duration is set for an unlimited period of time.

The individual projects have a duration of at least one week. For more distant locations we foresee a minimum of two weeks.

Location

The Art Bus primarily visits schools, daycare centers, but also art schools, youth shelters, refugee accommodations, festivals and locations in public spaces. One idea of the art bus is to make use of the places approached and its conditions.

Settings

Open Studio

In the Open Studio, people can work in groups. There is a setting for a closed group, as well as a setting for open, changing groups.

Individual settings

Here intensive 1:1 accompaniment is offered in individual settings. The accompanying pedagogue creates a safe space in the bus, which makes it possible to enter into personally moving topics.

Open art studio

Individual settings

artistic creation to strengthen resources

Production of natural colors

Cooking

growing herbs

movement: Yoga, dance

Circus: stilt walking, unicycling, juggling, playing poi

Theater (improv theater, etc.)

Mask and prop making, sewing costumes

Making music and building musical instruments

Discussion room for personal topics

Methods

Oriented to the needs and wishes of the creators, we provide impulses, material and a safe space. This can be used to experience and express oneself creatively. For this we offer a colorful spectrum, ranging from artistic methods to movement and theater. Through the appropriate method, the creators can experience themselves physically and mentally, ignite passion and discover their own abilities. This stimulates contact with oneself and strengthens self-efficacy and identity.

Methods from art therapy:

We offer sculpting at the clay field (according to Heinz Deuser) and watercolor painting with stick paints (according to Rudolf Steiner) in the therapeutic individual settings.

Literature reference: Heinz Deuser- Work on the clay field
The haptic way to ourselves Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen 2018.

Method Upcycling:

With found materials that we upcycle, we build, for example, a mosaic from old Cds. To recycle old materials artistically increases mindfulness regarding limited resources and the relation to one’s own environment. In addition, this process stimulates the imagination and encourages experimentation.

A comparable method was used in the “Transcultural Art Project” (project management Jil Beyer and Smaida Brestrich). https://transcultural-art-project.jimdofree.com/

Here is a picture of the resulting mosaic of old CDs:

Aspects of artistic creation

A certain material enables sensual, haptic experiences.

The creators experience their senses. By touching, smelling, hearing and looking at the material, a reaction is triggered, which brings the creator back into a relationship with himself or herself.

Literature reference: art therapy – from practice for practice: materials – methods – exercise courses, 2016 Christine Leutkart, Elke Wieland, Irmgard Wirtensohn-Baader.

Rhythm:

Everything alive in life vibrates in rhythms.

Rhythm is not a rigid, constricting order, but a vibrating, living order; an order that brings children into their own order, in the body, in the feelings and in the thinking.

In the rhythms we initiate, hands, feet, the whole body and everyday objects become instruments of rhythm.

With the help of the method “Bodypercussion” rhythm, movement, hearing and body feeling are united in a wonderful way.

Bodypercussion can be performed to speech rhythms or songs. In speech rhythms, the feeling for speech, the clear pronunciation and articulation of speech is strengthened.

There are also elements that are performed in pairs or by several people. Here it is important to touch each other attentively and to respond to each other. This trains and strengthens the social togetherness.

It is important to us that the participants can bring in their own ideas and suggestions. Because as soon as they are allowed to do so, they are completely involved and experience themselves, they learn to show themselves and also perceive each other.

Creative Dance – Dance Improvisation

For children and young people, dancing can be an important means of expressing feelings that cannot be put into words. Dancing awakens and promotes the joy of movement and dance. When dancing together, children and adolescents can experience different emotions and release excess energy. Age-appropriate exercises and techniques sensitize the body and train body awareness.

In KreativTanz, the focus is on free improvisation. Music, different rhythms, given themes or the interaction with materials and objects should inspire the children and young people to explore their own forms of movement and qualities. They try themselves out and discover themselves anew.

KreativTanz promotes:

Creativity and imagination
Emotionality and expression
Body awareness and strengthening
Joy of movement
Expansion of the movement repertoire
Social behavior (self-perception and group perception)

Health: Through dance and movement, ligaments and tendons are supplied with more blood, which promotes mobility and endurance. Numerous muscles are strengthened and the back and musculature are strengthened. This can prevent physical pain caused by prolonged sitting and lack of movement.

Holistic promotion: To express oneself and, is the basic prerequisite for the perception of other people and the world and thus the basic prerequisite for communication.

Children in particular, but also adults, like to create images themselves by drawing, painting, playing and thereby experiencing themselves creatively. Art meets this need because it works with images and visualizations.

It promotes similar mental processes as meditation by anchoring the painter in the present.

In addition, creative work has a calming, concentrating effect and strengthens the feeling of personal creative power: people create their own visual world.

Art is thus an ideal medium to express oneself freely.

Literature reference: Klaus W Vopel, Art therapy for children: 100 ideas for drawing and painting, 2014.

We are guided by models of aesthetic education and aesthetic experience according to Eva Sturm.

The position “from art” in 9 points according to Eva Sturm.

In comparison to participants, art mediators must start from a different image/understanding of art. When working in art education, art mediators must always start from a revelation of their own concept of art.
The phenomenon of transference means that participants always bring with them an underestimation of knowledge to the art mediators. They have a thirst for knowledge and want to learn from the art mediator.
Knowledge of instruction and knowledge of speech or body occur in combination. On the one hand, knowledge about one or more topics becomes relevant, on the other hand, one’s own development and confrontation with these topics and one’s own opinion about them are active.
Important is the awareness of one’s own activity and its effect on the participants. Also the non-activity should be made conscious.
In a successful process, art examines itself, the world view is reflected, thought mechanisms and traditions are reconsidered. This is considered reflective knowledge.
Nonsensical things get sense. Through a serious, reflected examination, insignificant, even nonsensical aspects are filled with meaning.
Awareness of the textual potential of the world. Everything can be read as text, since everything consists of signs. Images are also read in order to communicate through them.
Experience as a basis and as a suddenly occurring moment. Experience in this case is situational and/or bodily, and at best can be called aesthetic experience. (Roland Barths, something gets out of joint – punctum disturbance factor, something that overturns the meaning Ex. Mona Lisa mustache).
Art is the starting point for the mediation of art. This continuation is subjective and open in every direction. The art mediation wants a continuation of the art.

Literature reference: Mission Kulturagenten – Online publication of the model program “Kulturagenten für kreative Schulen 2011-2015”, Berlin 2015, at: www.kulturagenten-programm.de

Brandstaetter, U. (2014): Visual arts and music in dialogue. Aesthetic, sign-theoretical, and perceptual-psychological reflections on a concept of aesthetic education spanning all art disciplines. Augsburg, Wißner-Verlag

Following concepts of Reggio education and elements of Waldorf education, we accompany the children and young people on their way. We provide creative stimuli by offering a safe space with opportunities and materials for exploration. Encouragingly, we encourage the children to enter new territory and expand their skills.

The bus serves as a safe place for the children to feel secure and well cared for. Based on the model of “child friendly space” from emergency pedagogy (Friends of Rudolf Steiner’s art of education), traumatized children and adolescents can also find a place of retreat in “KUBU”.

Goals

The art bus creates a safe space for curious and playful exploration. Here we invite to discuss topics that have little space in everyday life or are tabooed:

Sexuality
Equality
Gender and diversity
Refugees

Art is the mediating instance and language, it enables encounters, non-verbal as well as verbal.

The aim is to provide access to artistic experience, playful discovery and the testing of expressive possibilities. Through the impulsive form of encounter of the art bus, we meet an openness in people that promotes curiosity and joy in life.

Target group

The art bus is open to all interested people, regardless of cultural, religious and socio-economic background. The focus is on educational work with children and young people.

As therapists and educators, we experience in our daily work that movement and art hold many healing potentials.

As experiences in the research context of the “Transcultural Art Projects 1 & 2 ” https://transcultural-art-project.jimdofree.com/already prove, art leads to an increased body and emotion perception. Art can promote individual expression and contribute to a strengthening of identity and will. At the same time, free and guided play with the given materials and body movement lead to joy in discovering the self and the environment.

Our offer stimulates to discover one’s own potential. This can offer a great new field of possibilities for people who, due to their life structure or socio-economically difficult background, rarely come into contact with art and culture.

We use this form of aesthetic education to increase social sensitivity and empathy and to open up creative potential.