About the Series

Can children understand historical art? Can they connect with objects whose origins lie outside their own world? Are they interested in works of art and cultural artefacts that seem unfamiliar at first glance? These were the questions explored by the project – a collaboration between the Institute of Fine Arts and Art History at the University of Hildesheim and the Hildesheim Cathedral Museum. The challenge lay in building on children’s interests, questions, experiences and concepts of knowledge to develop educational formats that both take children’s perspectives and worldviews seriously and open up a meaningful engagement with historical art and culture. A child-centred educational concept, which aims not at short-term experiences or the transmission of factual knowledge, but at lasting experiences and a reflective engagement with art and culture, was intended to take children’s questions and thoughts seriously. The educational concept should initiate and encourage meaningful engagement between artistic artefacts and children’s interests, whilst viewing the examination of historical objects as a frame of reference for contemporary questions and themes. Methods such as ‘philosophising with children’ and the practice of picture discussion embedded within it, as well as an approach based on artistic and aesthetic processes, are helpful in this regard. A high degree of sensitivity to the diversity of children is a further fundamental requirement for child-centred education. This is because every child approaches a work of art with different individual experiences, interests, needs and expectations, which are always embedded in social and cultural contexts and which enable understanding.

Sponsored by the Hildesheim Cathedral Building Association and the Hildesheim University Society e. V.

Booklets 1–8 can be ordered individually or in a collection folder (ISBN 978-3-934105-86-7).
Individual price: €4.00 / In the collection folder: €18.50