Constanze Schmidt/The Centre for Vocational Design, First Vocational Orientation Fair, 2017, Hamburg

Constanze Schmidt/The Centre for Vocational Design, Berufsorientierungsmesse der Zentrale für Berufsgestaltung, 2017, Hamburg

 

In 2016, Constanze Schmidt founded the Centre for Vocational Design (Zentrale für Berufsgestaltung/ZFB) in order to investigate how young people could become ‘working citizens’ when they design their vocational orientation according to their desires and interests. In her second art-based research project, she invited students from Goethe Gymnasium in Hamburg Lurup to research the idea of a contemporary ‘working citizen’ with regard to alternative working conditions and new professions. They refined artistic research practices from the first project by intervening into internship locations with individual research set-ups and artistic instructions.

With the First Vocational Orientation Fair at Hamburg’s FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research, the Centre for Vocational Design opened a Heterotopian Zone to continue their research with guests, such as the press officer of the municipal employment services, delegates from internship programmes and various workplaces as well as the Centre for School and Business (Zentrum für Schule und Wirtschaft), classmates, artists, teachers and parents. The entire Theatre of Research was converted into an exhibition centre consisting of five different booths, the floor covered with a blue exhibition carpet. Three successive rounds of research conducted simultaneously at all booths required the visitors to make rapid transitions and choices regarding their next question about being a ‘working citizen’. In participatory settings, visitors, together with young and adult ZFB experts, researched themes developed by the students such as the organisation of time in a nursing company, how to be socially-minded as a boss or how to avoid work in general. In the Heterotopian Zone of the First Vocational Orientation Fair, vocational orientation took the form of transgenerational future research.

 

Researcher: Constanze Schmidt

Co-researchers: Manuela Afriyie, Timar Alemayehu, Lisa Alpers, Zohal Amin, Maria Anschütz, Claas Jepsen, Florenz Kakarr, Oguz Karaimamoglu, Richard Keterling, Veronika Klauser, Marvin Klemm, Tara Mikeska, Sabrina Mostamandi, Enis Öz, Dorothea Paethe, Wiktoria Pilatowska, Massi Popal, Julian Scharlemann, Maxim Shneydmiller, Manraj Singh, Selin Ulas, Alexander Weritschew, Maurice Winter

Participants: Teresa Rosenkrantz, Hinrich Kindler and Tanja Senftleben, the people working at the internship locations, the press officer of the municipal employment services, delegates from vocational orientation programmes and workplaces and the Zentrum für Schule und Wirtschaft, classmates, artists, teachers and parents

Formats: Intervention into the Real, Testing in Performance, Try-out Institution, Heterotopian Zone