Paulina Seyfried and Paloma Nana, Temporary Gallery, May 2023
The program Temporary Gallery are currently developing in close collaboration with our cooperation partners aims to facilitate access to art and cultural institutions for teenagers and young adults aged 14-21 and to familiarize them with the art/culture sector as a potential career prospect. Our target group is primarily teenagers and young adults who are mostly denied access to art and culture due to marginalizing socio-economic factors.
Through workshops with artists, activists and curators, excursions to (inter)national art exhibitions and community meetings, we want to open networks for young people within the “institution” and support them in building sustainable relationships inside and outside Temporary Gallery, from which they can benefit in the long run. Through this diverse cultural program, they can establish contacts, come into contact with artists and cultural workers at an early age and, if interested, help shape important institutional development processes as young members of Temporary Gallery.
The project runs in cooperation with In-Haus e.V. (Integrationshaus), a “New German (Neue Deutsche)” association from Cologne-Kalk, which sees itself as an intercultural center and offers not only educational but also cultural activities for migrant and socioeconomically disadvantaged young people and adults,among others. In the course of this program, we want to take a different approach and encounter the young people in their familiar surroundings, get to know their concerns and needs and, based on this, establish long-term contacts and relationships, organize workshops along their needs and gradually welcome them for specific events in the premises of Temporary Gallery. Our second cooperation partner is the Katharina-Henoth-Gesamtschule, a school that is located in Cologne Vingst. We have teamed up with art teacher Tinani van Niekerk to actively participate in shaping her art courses and offer workshops with artists, curators or team members of Temporary Gallery in the framework of this collaboration. This “intervention” into scholastic art education will start in September and will ideally continue until the end of the upcoming school term (March 2023).
The idea is to use the upcoming exhibition in July “Cooking as performance”, curated by Aneta Rostkowska and Agustina Andreoletti as a starting point for this project. Together with In-Haus e.V. we will activate the water tower, a relict of the former chemical factory in Cologne Kalk as a cultural space. The water tower is adjacent to the “Köln Arkaden”, a popular shopping mall that is heavily frequented by teenagers and young adults as it has become an important meeting point for them. We are still developing the concept, yet the idea is to use the water tower as a place of encounter between teenagers/young adults and cultural/social workers as well as artists. Since food is a topic most people can identify with, we hope to find ways of connecting with young people through discussions about food and food culture.
