As a long-standing player in the intercultural education sector, particularly through its involvement in schools and daycare centres for children, our Initative LUNA PARK has often experienced the great importance of a successful transition from daycare to primary school and how this transition acts as a central interface for continuous educational progress. This transition is often a major challenge, especially for children whose families are often subject to systemic disadvantages due to their social and cultural background. In the frame of our peer project Dance yourself up! (Tanz dich groß!), we want to take an even closer and more fundamental look at the special moment of transition from nursery to school, make use of its specific opportunities and consolidate our special artistic and educational approach in practice.

Made possible by funds from the German Postcode Lottery, which supports projects of non-profit organizations throughout Germany in the areas of equal opportunities, nature and environmental protection as well as social cohesion, our already proven dance-artistic transition program is to be expanded into a transferable format and optimized and further developed together with dance teachers, dancers and educators. In this way, the target group reached (children from daycare centers and elementary school) is to be expanded in the long term and promoted more sustainably through permanent and low-threshold access to artistic education. To this end, children from several daycare centers receive dance lessons once a week, outside of the daycare centers’ core hours, under the guidance of dancers and dance teachers. In addition, our most important cooperation partner, the Gesundbrunnen Primary School, organizes dance lessons for pupils in the first grade. During several intensive days, children from the daycare centers come together with pupils from the elementary school and dance for and with each other. Against this background, a program of choreographies developed with the participation of the children is rehearsed and compiled to be presented in a final public showing to the children’s families and the socio-spatial actors and institutions in the Gesundbrunnen neighborhood. This gives the project public visibility and ensures the development of new contacts and networks. The project will continue after the summer vacations in 2024, with the children and first-graders who have just started school acting as peers for the new project participants from the daycare centers. A guideline for action is developed together with the participating institutional players, which is tested independently by the institutions and reflected upon and optimized in regular exchange meetings. Our initiative LUNA PARK acts as a networker, arranging and supporting the collaborations and formalizing and transferring the tried and tested working methods.