How do people deal with waste? What stories does our waste tell about consumption, appreciation, and sustainability? The second workshop of the teacher training ‘Klimawandel bestärkend vermitteln’ addresses the issue of waste and elaborates its multifaceted role in contemporary art and quotidian life.

In the workshop ‘Waste as Material: Global Cycles, Art, and Criticism’, we reflect together on how waste can be understood not only as a problem but also as a creative tool. We examine the cultural, social, and ecological implications of waste and ask how waste is produced, used, and disposed of in our society. We will look at waste as a resource in art and how artists around the world use waste as a material to draw attention to ecological and social grievances.

By way of practical exercises and discussions, art education methods are tested and developed to deal with waste/materials differently in the classroom. Based on the pieces of garbage brought along, we develop a game that deals with the production, recycling, disposal, form, and symbolism of different materials.

The aim of the workshop is to provide participants with new perspectives and tools to teach the use of material resources and their multiple dependencies creatively and critically in the classroom.

The free event is directed at teachers throughout the German-speaking world. For teachers working within Land Berlin it is recognised as an official training by the Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family.

The training was conceived and is led by Tarfa Bachan and Nanna Lüth, both from the UdK Berlin. It is part of the cooperation between HKW and UdK Berlin in the frame of the project Schools of Sustainability. Agency in the Face of Crisis.