Students guide students through BRITISH POP ART

April 29, 2019

For the current exhibition BRITISH POP ART – Masterpieces in abundance from the Heinz Beck collection. Special guest: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Jennifer Liß took over the management of the school project Students lead students. In her blog article, she gives us an insight into the project's progress over several weeks:

The eight students from the Elsa-Brändström-Gymnasium sit confidently in the reading café of the LUDWIGGALERIE and discuss the last round of Students Leading Students over hot chocolate and latte macchiato. The ninth-graders have been preparing for their tours of the current exhibition British Pop Art for nine weeks. Now the last tour is over and the hot drink is a well-deserved reward.

We had been meeting once a week in the museum since January to prepare for the upcoming tours. One big advantage of this group: they were already semi-professionals! With the exception of Amélie, all of them had already accompanied school classes through the last exhibition The Gesture. So they already know the procedure. And Amélie is simply taken along and gets tips directly from her friends in the class. So what am I actually still here for?

Oh yes, of course the students first needed an overview themselves. At the first meeting I walked with the group through the exhibition that had just opened. Introduce as many works as possible. Explain the topic. Find your way around. At least on this first tour the students were still relatively quiet. But that changed the following week.

Divided into three groups, in which the guided tours would later take place, it was now time to "explore for yourself!" Which works are interesting? What should be shown later? Of course, the main themes of the exhibition should be covered, but the choice of works was completely free. And so the selection of the three groups was very different. While Laura and Antonia integrated Robin Page's island, Jason, Japheth and Tijana preferred to include his work Handshake. Michelle, Leonie and Amélie, on the other hand, opted for Joe Tilson's Four Elements, which the others ignored entirely.

Now it was time to work out the content! Armed with the exhibition catalogue, audio guide, the signs in the exhibition and of course the internet, the students went looking for information on their own. Once the dates for the tours were finally set, they still had to practice hard.

First test tours in front of our own people: facing criticism, correcting mistakes. Later, a dress rehearsal in front of our own families or even in front of museum visitors who had been asked at short notice. The kids had already learned a lot in the last round of students leading students. Standing correctly, speaking clearly or not standing in front of the work you are currently working on - I didn't even have to give beginners tips like that. But what was screen printing again? What's the deal with print runs? And what was the name of the developer of the Benday Dots? [Note: His name was Ben Day J] We clarified these questions again and again so that every possible question would be answered during the tours, if that was even possible.

At the beginning of April, the time had come. Two elementary school classes, a seventh and an eleventh grade, were guided through the exhibition by the students of the Elsa Brändström Gymnasium. The elementary school classes in particular had a lot of fun: "The tours were good when everyone took part seriously," says Antonia in retrospect. And the fourth graders asked a lot of questions and were highly concentrated. It is difficult to say who got more out of the project in the end - the trained museum educators or the guided school classes. Both sides had fun. And the teachers who came to the museum with their classes also repeatedly stated: "It's different when the children are guided by young people. We should do that much more often!"

There will be a new round of students leading students in the autumn. Then new volunteers from the ninth grade will prepare for the exhibition "Struwwelpeter. Fidgety Philip, Paulinchen and Hanns Guck-in-die-Luft between fascination and child terror from 1844 to today". And hopefully many interested classes will accompany them through the exhibition again.

Author: Jennifer Liß