ESC: Tanzbegegnungen (Dance encounters) 2023

Our organisation Initiative LUNA PARK, founded in 2003 and supported by Weinmeisterhaus e.V. in Berlin until 2019, established itself in spring 2019 as an independent non-profit organization, “Initiative LUNA PARK e.V.”, based at Gesundbrunnen-Grundschule, an Elementary school in a social hotspot of Berlin-Wedding. Our organisation has been committing to the extracurricular artistic education of children, adolescents and young adults for many years by implementing a wide range of free-of-charge and low-threshold socio-cultural project formats, such as dance and theater project groups, courses, workshops, holiday programs and excursions, also in the context of international youth exchange projects and expert encounters, and since 2019 as well in the context of European long-term volunteer services within the framework of the ESK. Another concern of our Initiative LUNA PARK initiative is to combine these socio-cultural formats - as part of an artist residency at the above-mentioned Gesundbrunnen-Grundschule - with the professional artistic production in the field of performing arts and in this way to generate synergetic effects that have sustainable benefits for both sides. The program of activities of our Initiative LUNA PARK is planned, organized and supervised by its members and its freelance artistic staff, together with pedagogues, educators, artists and cultural workers from various disciplines, who - with the involvement of the project participants - also design and develop the program. The main aim of the program is to give children, adolescents and young adults, especially those with a migration and refugee background and limited social and cultural participation, opportunities to discover their creative potential, to develop it in concrete projects over the long term, and thus to promote them to develop into self-confident thinking and acting personalities. The local focus of our work is in the Berlin district of Wedding in the area of the Quartiersmanagements Badstraße. In this colorful, lively and multilingual neighborhood, which is also characterized above average by high unemployment, social inequality, lack of education and (child) poverty, our Initiative LUNA PARK has been working closely with the Gesundbrunnen-Grundschule for over ten years. With its skills and human and material resources, the school exceedingly supports and promotes the commitment of our organisation in the sustainable establishment of additional artistic and informal cultural educational offers that also address and involve the childrens and adolescents parents, families and the neighborhood. Also other local educational institutions, e.g. local elementary schools and daycare centers for children, are included in this cooperation (Carl-Kraemer-Grundschule, the children daycare centers Kleiner Muck, Bärenbande, Osloer Zwerge, Kunterbunt, and Weltkinder) as well as various cultural and educational partners (Uferstudios, Centre Francais de Berlin, Tanzkomplizen, Interkulturelles Theaterzentrum Berlin, Theater28, Theater Kalibani, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz BERLIN, Jugendkunstschule Mitte, WeTek GmbH i.a.).