Education and Mediation
The education and mediation platform of Bergen Assembly 2019 takes traditional forms of mediation, such as guided tours or family visits, as a starting point but twists them slightly. Instead of reproducing information, the mediators focus on utilising the triennial as a place for exchange, offering the opportunity to share experiences and knowledges, seeking positions that are unforeseen and remain open to the unexpected.
The programme has been devised to be accessible to all, providing an inclusive entry point to the exhibition and events within Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead. It consists of five modules: The School of Questions, Thursday and Saturday walks, Map Making, Imagined Futures and Bergen Assembly mediates Bergen. The programme is conceived and organised by Stacy Brafield and Daniela Ramos Arias in collaboration with Andrea De Pascual, David Lanau and Eva Morales Gómez from the collective Pedagogías Invisibles.
The meeting point for all education and mediation activities is Belgin, Rasmus Meyers allé 3, 5015 Bergen. Admission to all activities is free.
If you are interested in organising a group visit, want to book a tour, or if you would like to participate or contribute, and for any other enquiries regarding our education and mediation programme, please contact daniela@bergenassembly.no or drop by Belgin to meet a team member in person.
SCHOOL OF QUESTIONS
Tuesdays, 3–5pm
We advise signing up in advance by emailing stacy@bergenassembly.no
Participation without registration is possible according to the capacities of the event.
Information about weekly themes at Programme
The School of Questions is a platform for learning and research within Bergen Assembly, open to anyone, regardless of skills, age or experience. The School of Questions turns the notion of a school upside down to focus on questioning rather than providing answers. We gather directly after school or work every Tuesday, 3–5pm. Each participant receives a sketchbook where they can gather their thoughts, ideas, questions and responses. Anyone is welcome to join for free, once or regularly.
Over the course of ten weeks, through curiosity and play, the School of Questions will grapple with the concepts and topics proposed by the artworks on display and events happening during Bergen Assembly. Together with artist and educator Stacy Brafield, participants are invited to look, listen, talk and mark make; from paint strokes on paper to the traces your body leaves behind while walking through the exhibition. We will not be seeking answers, but will inquisitively find and learn how to ask further questions.
THURSDAY AND SATURDAY WALKS
Thursdays, 4–5.30pm
Saturdays, 2–4pm
Drop-in for individual visitors; groups of four people or more are asked to sign up at daniela@bergenassembly.no. Maximum capacity 20 people.
Information about weekly themes at Programme
Thursday and Saturday walks take as a starting point the idea of the guided tour at a gallery or museum. Participants are invited to join specially devised walks that draw upon the concepts of Bergen Assembly 2019. Together with mediator Daniela Ramos Arias, participants follow a choreographed route, looking at and discussing individual works and speculating on their interconnections.
The aim of the programme is to break with the conventions and constraints of formal mediation and avoid knowledge reproduction. The mediator will provide an approachable and comfortable space for the participants’ voices to be active and heard.
Guests from the Bergen Assembly team, core group and contributors will join the mediator in co-hosting some of these walks, offering their perspective, opinion and experience to the group and allowing the possibility to listen and learn to the story from the perspective of the ´maker´. At the end of each walk, we will gather at Belgin for coffee and cake. Sitting together around the table, we will have the chance to gather our thoughts, collectively or individually, reflecting upon our experience.
MAP MAKING
Sundays, noon–1.30pm
We advise signing up in advance by emailing daniela@bergenassembly.no
Participation without registration is possible according to the capacities of the event.
Information about weekly themes at Programme
Map making within the Bergen Assembly is a mediation workshop programme for families and individuals, bringing together people of all ages. Within the workshops, the participants will be making maps in different forms, for example; maps of conversation, hand drawn maps, mapping traces of our footsteps, all of which are made in response too and with specific elements of the exhibition. The workshops are on Sunday afternoons and are designed with an intergenerational methodology, open for all, regardless of experience and skill.
IMAGINED FUTURES
School visits to The Bergen Assembly
Monday–Friday, 9am–noon
Meeting point: Belgin
Schools and classes interested in school visits please contact daniela@bergenassembly.no
Bergen Assembly invites schools in and around Bergen to visit this year’s exhibition, Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead. These visits will be hosted by the education and mediation team and will combine two different age groups: 6–8 and 17-year-olds.
After an introduction to Bergen Assembly and the exhibition, the intergenerational group will be divided into equal, smaller, intergenerational groups. Imagined Futures takes place in the middle of one of the exhibition venues, surrounded by works of art. How can art help us imagine the future? Can art make us think about our world today? Each group will work collaboratively inside the exhibition. They are invited to embark on imaginary journeys to the past and the future – what is not anymore and what is not yet – collecting their ideas through drawing, writing, action and movement.
Education and Mediation team for Imagined Futures: Thea Haug, Ida Mari Njie Rølvåg and Mónica Sainz Serrano
BERGEN ASSEMBLY MEDIATES BERGEN
Programme details at Programme
In this series of education and mediation events, Bergen Assembly will organise tours and lectures that take a closer look at local institutions, history and landmarks through the lens of this year’s triennial Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead. We will be visiting the Botanical Gardens in Milde and take a closer look at the fresco paintings in the old Bergen Stock Exchange building, among others.
A special programme of tours and workshops is organised under the title Kolonisering – Hva er egentlig det? (Colonisation – What is it really?). This experimental programme of tours and workshops focuses on the exhibition Inntrykk fra Koloniene (‘Impressions from the Colonies’) at the Bergen University Museum of Cultural History.
Curated by Knut Mikkjel Rio, Hans Frode Storaas and Kari Årrestad and designed by Katrine Lund and Judy Sirks Vevle, this ethnographic exhibition, installed in 2014, was inspired by recent research into Norway’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and the project of European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, and reflects upon the consequences and continuities of these histories in the present day.
Taking the exhibition as a starting point, the tours and workshops invite participants to discuss critical questions about colonial legacies, society and museums: Who speaks in the museum? Whose stories are told? How is the colonial past discussed and represented? What are the implications for the present?
Hva er egentlig det? was devised by Zeregabr Bereketab Germastien, Arsiema Medhanie, Naomi Niyo Bazira and Katrine Rugeldal with the support of Susanna Antonsson, Daniela Ramos Arias, Stacy Brafield, Nora Landkammer, Sigrid Lien, Hilde Wallem Nielssen and Kari Årrestad and her team at the Bergen University Museum of Cultural History.
Meeting point: Bergen University Museum of Cultural History, Haakon Sheteligs plass 10, 5020 Bergen
Tours and workshops are offered once weekly in both English and Norwegian. Workshops are also offered to schools and to organised groups by pre-arrangement.
EDUCATION AND MEDIATION EVENTS