The Biergerbühn was one of the first projects supported by the Sommer Foundation between 2017 and 2019. Through this participatory project, the collective Independent Little Lies created a space where children and adolescents could discover and exercise their creativity by staging a play that reflected their worldview. During weekly workshops at Kulturfabrik Esch, conducted by theatre and dance teachers, actors, writers, and set designers, the young participants learned about various practices and techniques of the theatre arts, and became authors themselves.

K -D’ÉCOLE is an artistic and cultural education project carried out in parallel with the creation of PROJECT K, and carried out in dialogue with three partners: the Lycée Vauban, the TROIS C-L (Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois) and the company Corps In Situ/ARTEZIA. The aim of this project is to promote creation and transmission by introducing an artistic and professional creation residency in a school, the Lycée Vauban.

“Bringing together, sharing, creating, exchanging, expressing oneself, interacting and dialoguing” : these are the values of capoeira. Between dance, percussion and music, it inculcates humility, allows the surpassing of oneself and the learning of respect for others. Capoeira has always had the vocation to include and bring people together. Throughout the year 2020, Abadá Capoeira Luxembourg celebrates its 20 years of existence and cultural and social action. In this context, the Sommer Foundation is financing the project “La Roda” (the round, as the participants form a circle) which will culminate in a capoeira show performed with the pupils of the primary school of Bonnevoie-Gellé and the children and teenagers of the Abadá Capoeira Luxembourg club. To prepare for this performance at the primary school of Bonnevoie-Gellé, the pupils are taking classes in capoeira, Afro-Brazilian dances and Brazilian percussion. Through these workshops where “music makes the body speak”, young people from all walks of life are introduced to Afro-Brazilian culture and experience a new space for intercultural exchange. Via “La Roda”, the capoerist apprentices develop their self-esteem and creativity, but also their ability to express themselves and exchange.

Between travel story and mythology, the play Ecological Anxiety Disorder plunges young spectators over the age of 14 into a dreamlike and surreal world, an expedition into a world apart, in the very heart of the seventh continent. A plastic continent made up of circular currents in the middle of the ocean. In this terrible relationship with the environment, the boundary between the illusory and the real becomes blurred: the ancestral fears of sea monsters, both frightening and fascinating, re-emerge between the symptoms of this pathology, eco-anxiety.

Far from falling into moralizing traps, this immersion in the abyss takes us on a fascinating scenic journey. In Ecological Anxiety Disorder, the performers take over a synthetic ecosystem in the middle of a lost paradise. An odyssey that is both poetic and disturbing, choreographing body and matter. Thanks to the “Transmissions” project based on the research material of the piece, the artists initiate young teenagers to creation and respect for the environment through a series of scenic workshops: writing, dance and music. Immersing the young people in the heart of the theatrical world and the ecological problems, they open up a dialogue by preparing the young people for the world of the play and by collecting their questions after the creation.

Within the framework of the children’s production of the Mierscher Kulturhaus D’Mina an déi vergiesse Melodie, the Sommer Foundation supports educational music workshops for hearing-impaired children at the Centre de Logopédie. D’Mina an déi vergiesse Melodie is a music and theatre show based on the work of Beethoven, accessible to hearing and hearing-impaired children, thanks to the participation of professional Luxembourgish artists and a sign language actress.

MY VOICE IS MY POWER is a choral project organised by Douri non-profit organisation. This project aims to bring together young people from different cultures and languages. In spite of their differences, they are encouraged to communicate. Their common language is music.

Through music, the young people have been introduced to each other’s culture. They identified what they have in common and work to accept diversity. The group was made up of young people from immigrant and local backgrounds. In addition to working on voice, repertoire and choral singing, the group has strengthened its cohesion and acceptance of diversity. The workshops were led by Maestro Shafi Badreddin.

www.douri.lu

Anger is a very familiar and generally negative feeling. Children are conditioned not to express their anger publicly, to contain it. As they grow older, they are more likely to hide it. However, anger is not an irrational emotion and should be taken seriously and expressed in a positive way. This is what Kopla Bunz wanted to achieve through its piece “Mega béis! Nur Wut!” for children from 6 years old.

www.megabeis.lu

For the 125th anniversary of the school, the Lycée des Arts et Métiers decided to present itself in a new form. Apart from the more conventional events that punctuate such festivities, the school opted for an exhibition/installation directed by the artist Edmond Oliveira, which questions the place of the school in our societies.

The Think ahead exhibition is based on the concept of participation of all pupils and students of the school. “We put our students at the centre of the project by soliciting their skills, their know-how. But not exclusively academic, we want to give them a space to present themselves! We want them to understand that this is their school, their training and that this school works for and with them.”

www.artsetmetiers.lu

Mudam hosted the exhibition “More Sweetly Play the Dance” by South African artist William Kentridge between 13 February and 6 June 2021. This exhibition has the particularity of being part of the red bridge project, a cultural project uniting the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, the Philharmonie and the Mudam. William Kentridge, a multi-disciplinary artist with a mastery of the plastic and performing arts, is therefore halfway between the disciplines promoted by the three Luxembourg cultural institutions. Throughout the exhibition, the BTS Media Writing class from the Lycée Classique de Diekirch and the 1ère Section Image class from the Lycée des Arts et Métiers were the new reporters for Mudam! In the form of a photographic report and a written report, the students revealed the secrets behind the scenes of the exhibition. Following the artist and the Mudam team throughout the exhibition project ( installation and associated programme), the Mudam Student Reporters took an original and personal look at the exhibition.

Through this project, Kultrun asbl, in cooperation with the Waldorf School in Luxembourg City, aims to create a new space in the school context for the development of the artistic and social skills of the students. Through a regular drama class, children in the 6th grade can experience different ways of artistic expression: through speech, music, choreography and photography. In this way, they have the opportunity to work together to achieve a common goal, which will allow them to discover and value themselves as individuals and as a creative community.

Giving young people a voice was the aim of the LAUTSPRECHER project of the Institut Pierre Werner.

In eight poetry slam workshops at the Lënster International School, the Sportlycée and the European School I, young people aged 14 to 18 were challenged to lyrically deal with the theme of freedom in the Corona era. Professional slam poets Bas Böttcher and Florian Cieslik guided them in writing and performing the texts.

The project also includes a training course for all interested teachers on the subject of poetry slam, certified by the Institut de formation et de l’éducation Nationale du Luxembourg.

Watch a short video clip of the project

To launch a new series of workshops, entitled “Architektur SUMMER”, the LUCA has been supported by Fondation Sommer. Through these workshops, the participants are led towards different architectural or urbanistic reflections, but also towards more social aspects and they work on themes that change every year. For the first edition, in summer 2021, of this new programme, LUCA has chosen the theme of “Tiny Houses”, a movement that originated in America and quickly conquered the whole world and found many followers.

During this workshop, children from 6 years old were asked to reflect on several points: how to live in a small space, to discover the advantages and disadvantages, to become familiar with the idea of alternative, ecological and minimalist housing. The workshop went beyond theory. To allow them to be creative, but also to create a greater knowledge and understanding of their built environment, real wooden “Tiny Houses” were imagined and built with the children on a 1:2 scale (they were therefore twice as small as in reality). Together, the participants created a small “Tiny Houses village” in order to raise their awareness of community life.

This is the story of young teenagers on the run, who find themselves left to their own devices in an abandoned “temple”: no presence, no adult to show them how to cope… They don’t know each other and yet they will have to learn to live together for an indefinite time. Coming from different backgrounds, will they be ready to trust each other and live together in order to survive? What will happen if the young people start to create their own system of rules and laws? Will everyone find their place in this community? Will they manage to recreate a better world?

This unique participatory project, launched in 2020, allowed young people aged 12 to 20 to discover the performing arts, to experiment with artistic practice and to become artists of their own creation. Accompanied in their work by 4 experienced multidisciplinary artists – Natercia Rebelo, Benoît Callens, Sacha Hanlet and Elric Vanpouille – and directed by Nathalie Moyen, they worked throughout last season to present this innovative show combining theatre, dance and music on the CAPE stage.

This project is based on an initial proposal and with the financial support of Fondation Sommer.

View trailer on vimeo.com

In the framework of her architecture mediation project WAA – Wat ass Architektur? the independent artist-architect Julie Marthe Hoffmann organised, in collaboration with different educational and cultural partners in Luxembourg, workshops with the title WAA – OP WEI ENGEM GRONDRËSS WËLLS DU WUNNEN? in which schoolchildren were asked to imagine the plans in which they would like to live. The aim of this project was to consciously and thoroughly address the topics of housing, cohabitation and architecture and to create a public debate on the most suitable housing for our current and future lifestyles. Thus, these life-size reflections on “new forms of housing” make it possible to imagine new solutions, at the heart of the housing problem in Luxembourg.

Students of the Lycée des Arts et Métiers under the artistic direction of Joseph Tomassini and Jean Back.

This collaboration between Jean Back and the 2TPTI class (video and photography) at the Lycée des Arts et Métiers is based on the play “Bilder einer Ausstellung revisited”, which accompanies the new novel “l’Arc di Marianna” (Editions Guy Binsfeld) by Jean Back.
The author asked the students to create a visual interpretation of the texts he had written for Modest Mussorgsky’s famous piano cycle. The photographs created in this way are thus a further development of the historical pictures by Viktor Hartmann, which inspired the Russian composer. The very free literary interpretation of Mussorgsky’s work by Back is contrasted with the very personal view of the young people, who were able to get to know the diverse professional profiles and working worlds in the theatre through this project.

This project was initiated and organised by the Fondation EME and the state school CSAE Adam Roberti which welcomes refugee children who have just arrived in Luxembourg. In weekly workshops, children from two classes learned to play the djembe and to learn about music. The djembe allows for creative and direct expression. This versatile instrument, which does not produce false notes, gives confidence to its performers. Through music, the children were able to express themselves without language barriers, through rhythm and dance. Regardless of their age or nationality, percussionist Robert Bodja succeeded in captivating all the participants and arousing their interest in the djembe, rhythm and music in general.