RUHR.2010: The Ruhr Metropolis is European Capital of Culture
Stiftung Mercator is enjoying the numerous creative and innovative activities which are taking place during the Ruhr region’s year as European Capital of Culture. With our projects, we are the largest private, non-commercial partner of RUHR.2010. We are supporting the following projects with a total of 2.9 million euros:
- pottfiction – Theatre, Art and Camps for Young People in the Ruhr Metropolis is being staged by Stiftung Mercator together with seven theatres and the Berlin-based designer collective anschlaege.de as part of the RUHR.2010 programme of events for young people. Throughout this one-year project, young people will work together with artists in camps and theme-based project workshops, creating out-of-the-ordinary theatre work in the Ruhr region. At the same time, pottfiction will interlink the children’s and youth theatres of Bochum, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Hamm, Herne, Oberhausen and Castrop-Rauxel.
Read more about the project here
- The international Arts for Education! symposium on arts education will be taking place in Essen from 13 to 15 September 2010. Around 300 experts from the fields of academia, practice and politics will exchange their views and opinions on different European systems and models of arts education for children and young people. The symposium will address on the one hand the political and societal responsibility for arts education and, on the other, the different forms that arts education can take.
From 11 to 15 September 2010, 100 German-speaking young people from 35 European countries will additionally be coming together to attend the Arts for Education! youth symposium. In the run-up to the event, from March 2010, an Internet platform will give them the chance to examine art, culture and arts education on the basis of their experience and knowledge. They will then be able to contribute what they know about arts education – not to mention their demands and expectations – to the expert discussion.
Read more about the project here
- The MELEZ project is one of the major core projects of RUHR.2010. Its aim is to work together with young people and artists in drawing up a common vision for coexistence in the Ruhr Metropolis. Stiftung Mercator’s support for MELEZ is a firm declaration of its belief in the foundation’s home region: the Ruhr is a “future laboratory” for coexistence in a culturally diverse society. Today, people from 170 nations and over a hundred religious communities live here. MELEZ helps portray the region’s cultural diversity and gives new impetus to the region and its people above and beyond its year as European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010.
Read more about the project here (in German)
- In cooperation with the Essen Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI), 100 young academics from the region will be brought together with renowned national and international scholars in the Global Young Faculty to work from the autumn of 2009 to November 2010 on central research topics in the areas of climate, technology, economics, health, culture and society. The network is to create an international and interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of key future issues, linking research and societal responsibility.
Read more about the project here
- The high point of the Global Young Faculty will be the congress Our Common Future in November 2010, in which all the young academics from the Global Young Faculty will participate. The congress will be held from 2 to 6 November 2010 in Hanover and Essen. "Our Common Future" is a joint conference of Volkswagen Foundation, Deutsche Messe and Stiftung Mercator in association with the City of Hanover (capital of the State of Lower Saxony, Germany) and RUHR.2010.The congress will focus on debates concerning central questions for the future which arose as a result of Expo 2000 in Hanover. In Essen, the congress will mark the end of the region’s year as European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010.
Read more about the project here
- As part of the region’s forthcoming year as European Capital of Culture, the Science Forum Ruhr is organizing an interdisciplinary series of events on the subject of The Ageing Society – Challenges and Opportunities, aimed at exploring the huge challenge of demographic change. The events will present the various thematic facets of the ageing society and will highlight new regional developments, forward-looking models for further discussion and innovative approaches to dealing with demographic change in the Ruhr metropolis, with an essential contribution being made by science and research.
Read more about the project here (in German)