The Berliner Schulpate visit URBAN NATION

  • by Geneviève Debien

The Berliner Schulpaten visited the Stiftung Berliner Leben again! This time, a 5th grade class from Galilei Primary School discovered the professions of librarian at the Martha Cooper Library and mediator at the URBAN NATION Museum. The curious pupils were able to be active during the tours and were hardly satiated with answers!

Photo: Oluwaremi Dasho-Stierand

At our specialist graffiti and street art library, the Martha Cooper Library, students demonstrated their knowledge of public libraries, especially the America Memorial Library which is close to the school, and worked out the differences between the different types of libraries. Inquisitive questions were asked about the library and they learned about the different ways to start a career in librarianship, as well as the different duties that await a library worker. Afterwards, the pupils were allowed to browse through the stock – with among them, for example, Spray Nation by Martha Cooper or the huge book on the history of tattoos by Henk Schiffmacher, and ask more questions. After a short break, the children were taken to the reading room located in the museum to see where library visitors are allowed to work with the books.

Afterwards they got an impression of the mediation work in the URBAN NATION Museum and after an express tour they were allowed to take a quiz in the exhibition TTALKING… & OTHER BANANA SKINS exhibition. They got a good overview of the works and were again very eager to learn. The quiz also sharpened their view of individual works. As a little highlight, they were all allowed to leave their tag on the walls of the washroom!

About Berliner Schulpate:

The aim of Berliner Schulpate is to support primary school children in developing career aspirations and to introduce professions in a playful, practical and creative way. The principle is simple: career mentors from Berlin’s business community introduce their profession to the children. The children then visit them in their companies. In this way, they meet professional role models and learn about everyday working life and the requirements of different professions in a playful and practical way.