Children in the Central Denmark Region can start to find their imaginations and dreams of sustainable childhood cities of the future. The region has just sent DKK 700,000 to Kulturprinsen and is therefore backing the FUTURAMA project, which gives children in the Central Denmark region the opportunity to work on what they imagine and dream their future cities and communities might look like through experiments, art and architecture.
The grant for Kulturprinsen from the Region of Central Jutland is part of the cultural pool for regional development. The Committee for Regional Development can thus bring good news to a total of 13 cultural projects in Central Jutland, which will receive a total of DKK 4.701 million from the cultural pool for development and experiences.
- We are both grateful and proud that Region Midtjylland is once again supporting children's culture. In FUTURAMA, we are building on the experience gained from recent regional projects, TRUTH TO THE WORLD (2019), NORTH LIGHT (2020) and ART ON TV (2021), all of which have focused on the potential of art and culture in primary schools' work with sustainability and the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, says Ulla Voss Gjesing, Head of Centre at Kulturprinsen.
Focus on children's curiosity and experimentation
FUTURAMA's main focus is to create artistic, sensory-aesthetic and architectural experiments with the theme of the SDGs: Sustainable Cities and Communities. The aim is to give children the opportunity to challenge habits, see the world with new eyes, reflect on and imagine what has not yet been created. FUTURAMA will, for the first time, target children in school after-school and club hours.
- It is our opinion that the involvement of external artists and cultural mediators in an interdisciplinary collaboration with educators in SFOs and club offerings could contribute with new energy to the school leisure area, by inspiring new initiatives and activities. The experiments are created together with the children, who work together on how their experiments can be disseminated and involve people other than themselves. In this way, the project is not only about the children's co-creative encounter with art, but also about how the children can process, communicate and stage their own investigations, discoveries and stories for others, says Ulla Voss Gjesing.
Children's culture and the SDGs in focus
Although the projects work in very different areas and with very different interventions, the characteristic of the projects supported is that the majority focus on development and the future. Sustainability, the SDGs and children's culture are some of the themes that recur in several of the projects funded. Also common to the projects is the broad cooperation across stakeholders, sectors and municipalities.
- Sustainability and the SDGs are top priorities in virtually every industry - including the cultural sector. They are essential parameters when working on development. It is also an agenda we see in many cases among the projects granted. In general, the projects awarded embrace many of our cultural policy areas, such as children and young people, well-being and health, and rural areas," says Vice-Chair of the Committee for Regional Development, Henrik Qvist (Ø) in a press release.
FUTURAMA is a collaboration between Kulturprinsen, BUM - Network for Child and Youth Culture in the Central Jutland Region, Svalegangen/United Change, The Great Standing Guild, Rumgehør and five Central Jutland municipalities, Ringkøbing-Skjern, Syddjurs, Horsens, Holstebro and Viborg.
