Open Universities – How do we want to learn?

Campus for a day, a place to learn from each other and a laboratory for urban experimentation. In a participatory workshop on June 18, 2022, on the grounds of Hallen Kalk, learning itself, but also the space of learning, will be rethought and developed.

Conventional concepts and methods of gaining knowledge are increasingly proving unsuitable for understanding, or even helping to shape current processes of change under the structural conditions of globalization and digitalization. In this situation, it is necessary to rethink and test forms and methods of collaboration between science, art and civil society engagement. How can knowledge be generated and transferred collaboratively? How can spaces of open research be developed where experimentation is possible outside of institutionalized disciplinary jurisdictions, educational formats and curricula?

In a full-day workshop on June 18, 2022, key players from the fields of educational theory and practice, art and design, and the interested public will set about finding answers. The derelict site of the »Hallen Kalk« in Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine will serve as a temporary campus. There are intensive discussions between politics and urban society about the subsequent use of this former industrial site. It is surrounded by various schools with their institutionalized forms of learning and teaching. For this very reason, it offers an exciting environment for an event that invites people to question what they have learned and to redesign methods of knowledge transfer.

At interactive stations around the site, participants will discuss and explore approaches to a radical pedagogy of the 1960s and 1970s, rediscovering them as archives and resources. They range from experimental practices of environmental perception in the sense of walking scientist Lucius Burckhardt to creative procedures of »learning by doing«. Here, »space is rethought as a third educator« (Loris Malaguzzi).

The participatory workshop offers an opportunity to explore pressing questions about the future of learning: What spaces of learning do tomorrow’s society and university need, and what self-determined processes can be used to implement them? How can spaces for exchange between science, art and alternative everyday practices be created? How can the ability to develop designs for the future be trained collaboratively? And what role does art and design play in this? What experimental forms of learning call for creative co-creation in society, the city and in politics? How can a university be rethought as a central actor in a globalized present in which urgent social issues are negotiated and the dispositions of negotiation themselves are critically questioned?

Location: Hallen Kalk, meeting point in front of the AbenteuerHallen, Christian-Sünner-Straße 8, 51103 Cologne
Time: Sat., June 18, 2022, 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Organized by Robert Hartmann, Jana Hortian, Klaudia Daub and Emilie Pesch in cooperation with Konstantin Hehl and Kulturhof Kalk e.V., AbenteuerHallenKalk and the action initiative tunstadtmachen

Supervised by Prof. Carolin Höfler with Mario Frank and Julian Hoffmann

Other activities this weekend: On the evening of June 18, the ecosign/Akademie für Gestaltung is organizing a »Public Dinner« with the neighborhood of the Hallen Kalk and on June 19, a workshop will be held on site by the architecture collective raumlaborberlin in collaboration with DOMiD e.V. within the context of the domidlabs.

An event of the »Open Universities« of the TH Köln and the University of Cologne, funded by the RheinEnergie Stiftung within the context of the focus topic »Society and Digital Transformation«.

Picture: Jana Hortian, Hallen Kalk, Cologne, 2022.

Program

Workshop in German language

11.00 Uhr
Willkommen

11.15 Uhr
Einführung

11.30 Uhr
Reflexiver Spaziergang über das Gelände der Hallen Kalk
mit Kulturhof Kalk e.V.

12.45 Uhr
Eilika von Anhalt, Berlin
»Kulturgüter – Lernorte der Zukunft«

13.00 Uhr
Ausstellung zu Praktiken experimentellen Lernens
»Open Universites – Stadt der partizipativen Visionen«

13.15 Uhr
Bärbel Lange und Jutta Pöstges, Köln
»Das Elefantentor – Schutzräume im inklusiven Kunsthaus Kalk«

14.00 Uhr
Pause – mögliches Mittagessen bei Trash Chic

14.45 Uhr
Sophie Friedel, Freiburg
»Drop In Ride Out«

15.30 Uhr
»verlernen lernen, hand-werken, radikalisieren, rollbrettfahren«
120-Minuten-Workshops 

17.30 Uhr
Diskussion

18.00 Uhr
Schluss