Founded in 2003 as an open collective of freelance artists of various disciplines, our initiative LUNA PARK institutionalized itself in March 2019 as an independent non-profit association based at Gesundbrunnen-Grundschule, a hotspot school in Berlin’s Wedding district, with whom the initiative has been working increasingly closely since 2009.
The main goal of the LUNA PARK initiative is to connect projects of extracurricular artistic education for children, adolescents and young adults, especially those with migration and refugee backgrounds and limited social and cultural participation, with professional production in the field of performing arts and to create lasting synergies at the interface of these areas. To this end, the LUNA PARK initiative regularly realizes numerous socio-cultural formats, productions in the field of contemporary dance theater, and international exchange programs for young dance and theater professionals and cultural education specialists.
The spatial focus of these activities is in Wedding in the area of the Badstraße neighborhood management (Quartiersmanagements Badstraße), where the initiative is committed to working with elementary schools, daycare centers, and other local partners to create additional cultural educational opportunities that also appeal to and involve parents, families, and the neighborhood in the Kiez. The focus of this artistic and socio-cultural work is to expand local cultural offerings and make them more accessible in the long term through dance and theater clubs, courses, workshops and vacation programs, as well as through jointly developed theater productions for children and the open production of dance performances for adults and their public performance. The permanent establishment of an artist residency at the Gesundbrunnen elementary school plays an important role in this.
The LUNA PARK initiative aims to promote participation and positive individual identification opportunities in an environment that is characterized to an above-average extent by precarious economic conditions, social exclusion and, not least, insufficient access to cultural and educational institutions. The LUNA PARK initiative is in the process of further expanding this commitment and, together with its partners, securing and stabilizing the provision of its services in the long term within the framework of a permanent network. To this end, the initiative has already been able to build up an extensive network.