As part of its architectural education mission, the LUCA – Fondation de l’Architecture et de l’Ingénierie regularly organises activities for children and young people.

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. A Tiny House contains all the essentials for daily life: kitchen, bed, bathroom… However, everything is housed in a very small space ranging from 12 to 25 m2.

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.

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.

A journey can be manifold. It can be geographical, but also literary and philosophical. One can travel for the taste of exploration, discovery, contemplation, a desire for adventure, a spiritual call or a poetic vocation. One can also travel without moving, letting the spirit wander and thus escaping while the body remains motionless.

Despite the sanitary context, this was made possible by a strict hygienic concept and a successful collaboration between all stakeholders. For the second time, the company entered the Lycée Vauban for a one-week creative residency in January 2021. This enabled the students to familiarise themselves with the stages of the choreographic creation process. Afterwards, practical workshops were organised so that the students could experiment with contemporary dance and its language.

A short film “Trip, a choreographic creation” recounting the artists’ residency in the school was made by the students of the cinema-audiovisual option and also presented at the “Cinécourts en Herbe” festival.

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.

Based on this creation, the workshops to prepare for the show allow children to listen to, perceive and feel music in their own way, to get to know various musical instruments and to express themselves on music by dancing and singing.  The workshop is conducted by the Luxembourg theatre pedagogue Catherine Hengesch, who plays on stage and who co-developed the concept of the show.

In general, this production raises awareness of deafness and underlines the importance of accessibility to artistic productions; accessibility that must be guaranteed to the whole society, including people with special needs. The hearing public (re)discovers sign language as a powerful and surprising tool of expression.

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.

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.