Awake is the New Sleep
The minds of children
Have no innate empathy:
There lies our future.
Every second three babies are born, with a world average of 358,192 births a day. Beginning at that instant in time, the harsh reality is that the environment in which a child is raised, including the position and ethnicity of the parents and even the area in which the child grows up, will greatly affect its worldviews and goals later in life. People who have been forced to grow up in poverty stricken areas may never be able to experience the freedom of learning to practice an art, beyond what is necessary to survive in day to day life. Children who never get a chance to have playmates from other social and cultural backgrounds may grow up not understanding the concept of equality as it applies to the human race. The social ramifications of such misunderstandings can be seen throughout our world today, from the small-scale gang wars over home turf to the religious wars that never cease to rage. With the thousands lives that are being created every day, there are surprisingly few adults who are working towards creating equal opportunities for the youth, even in the most well developed of countries. I was lucky enough to be one of the privileged few that grew up being shown that I should treat everyone with equal respect. I was also fortunate to be given the opportunity to interact with those who are not as lucky as I was. The perspective that I gained in the United States made me curious enough to want to study the efforts of other countries to give opportunities to youth in underprivileged populations.
In the flamboyantly artistic city of Berlin, it seemed that the city and community might go to greater lengths for the Berliner youth than the under-funded programs in the United States. I thought that Berlin’s cultural background might ensure that the youth culture was receiving the guidance that it needs in order to prevent the repetition of past mistakes, limitations, and prejudices, at least within the confines of the artistic community. My research question therefore developed into the following: how are underprivileged youth in the vibrantly artistic city of Berlin being given their opportunity to become educated and tolerant, especially through the arts? I chose the education in the arts as a general representation of the attention being given to the youth of underprivileged communities, and their respective futures. My reasoning was based on what I have seen in the United States; several programs have been developed to assist underprivileged youth by giving them opportunities that they would not usually have, such as an after school program in the arts. These same programs are those that are studying the social effects of the youth who went to such after school programs, as opposed to those who had no extra direction put into their social education. Once in Berlin, I found that my choice to use the arts as a representation of the aid being provided to the underprivileged youth was valid; I soon came into contact with the Berlin-based program, Fusion Street. This program was the epitome of the research that I wanted to do in Berlin, as it related both to underprivileged migrant youth in Berlin, who greatly need to learn the benefits of acceptance of other cultures, and to supplementing German artistic education.
The aforementioned “underprivileged” populations of Berlin are often comprised of migrant couples and families, attempting to make a living in a country that does not readily accept migrant cultures. For example, there are vocal sections of the German government who are opposed to building mosques, and are generally against the Muslim and Turkish populations’ right to be an integral part of Germany. These prejudices, while not held by the majority of the German population, are a basis for social conflict and violence in Berlin. In migrant majority sectors, such as Kreutzberg, children grow up within a community that does not diversify its members purposefully. It is therefore not their fault when they grow up without having had contact with other cultures and perspectives. All they know is what they have been shown in local schools and playgroups, organized by parents who are concerned with their children’s safety, and therefore want to keep them close to home and the culture that they know. When their children grow up without a sense of cultural relativism or a world outside their own, it is no wonder that conflicts arise between cultures. The cultural conflict issue is certainly not specific to Germany, as we have seen through religious wars all over the world, and cultural battles that are occurring in the Middle East at this very moment. Neither is the general problem of cultural misunderstanding one that has originated in the youth of these cultures; the problem stems from the prejudices of the adults and leaders of the community. However, the youth may be the solution to the problem. With proper well-rounded education, as well as adults condoning more open-minded behavior, the cycle of distrust and violence between different cultures can come to an end. It is towards this end that Fusion Street, conveniently located in Kreutzberg, is working.
Fusion Street is an ideal place to find hope for the future. It is a facility run by Wolfgang Janzer and his wife, but created solely for the children of the community, regardless of age or cultural background. Wolfgang developed the idea for a cultural center for youth based on the social disorder and prejudice that he saw in Kreutzberg and the surrounding area, and cultural experiences that he had in London. His simple solution was to create a place for development and free expression where children could learn that everyone was accepted, right in their hometown. Fusion Street created a facility in the center of Neukolln where children can go to do homework with the help of tutors, play outside in the street without fear of cars, and create artistic projects of their choice and method. There was extensive thought put into the creation of the Manege building, with a large padded gymnasium room where children can learn acrobatics or perform on the stage, a backyard with room for volleyball or just outdoor hide and seek, a sound studio for the development of musical talent, a studio with room for dance classes, and a wood and paper shop full of projects in progress. Every wall on the inside and outside is decorated with art, masks and paint that the children who are regulars at the Manege facility have designed and created themselves. The whimsical nature of the facility is that this type of play-work is never finished. As soon as one project is finished or one wall is decorated, there is always one more in need of help or refurbishment, ready to take its place. After seeing the beautiful facility, I was forced to reconsider the methods with which I was going to perform my study of the reasons behind and the progress of Manege. When I first read about Manege and the Fusion project online, I imagined that the participants were all over the age of 10, and would be fluent enough in English and aware enough of their surroundings to converse with me about their experiences. After viewing Manege, however, I saw that the day-to-day population was around 9 years old, and the best information that I could get would be from the director, Wolfgang Janzer. He worked face to face with the children every day, and was able to judge the progress that his efforts were making in the community.
Therefore, the main body of my research about Fusion Street was conducted through an interactive interview with Wolfgang Janzer himself, in which I was given a tour of the facilities, as well as allowed to ask unlimited questions about whatever I saw. As we wandered through the facility I kept my camera handy to photograph any images that captured the magnificence of the facility, which was not at first visible on the surface. The first time I visited Fusion Street, I walked the entire street and was amazed that the artwork and walls that had no unintentional graffiti over them. (I later learned from Wolfgang that the other members of the community seldom defiled the creations of the children; they felt that they had taken a part in the act of creation, and so no one tried to destroy anything.) My method of question and answer, as well as intimate observation of the inner workings of the facility and project, was the best way for me to gather information. I saw for myself the types of people that worked and played there, and what I could not see for myself in a few visits, I learned from Wolfgang, who has been there every day since the beginning of the program. He shared his observations about how interactions grew and developed, as well as the general affects that he saw in the community. His assistance was crucial, because he had been living inside my research for far longer than I have been curious about it. His participation also eliminated some of the bias that my observations alone might have brought to my research. Although I felt slightly limited because I did not have the time or language skills to develop a relationship with the children who participated in activities at Manege, and I was therefore unable to conduct interviews directly with the people affected by the project, I gleaned enough information from what I saw to be able to interpret Wolfgang’s comments and answers to my questions. Had I not been able to use his eyes to see the social situation in Neukolln, I would have feared that my perspective as an outsider was making me prejudiced. It is possible that I have now traded my own prejudices on the social situation in Neukolln for Wolfgang’s, but I suspect that someone who has lived in and done so much for a community must have a more realistic view than I could ever bring.
Fortunately, I also had several other methods of gathering information about the social situation and the education systems in Berlin. The speakers that came to class to talk about their experiences in many fields, from education to sports, each contributed to the conclusions that I drew in answer to my project. Getting inside just Wolfgang Janzer’s head may not have been enough, but experiencing the lives of the other speakers as well gave me a well rounded image of the average view. I was not directly conducting interviews with these people, but I think that this allowed me to see their feelings on issues that they considered a natural part of the larger issues that they were discussing. Though this limited me to rarely discussing my project outright with them, the fact that they expressed enough of their views without even meaning to, shows just how prevalent social conflict and its solutions can be. The interview and observation methods were appropriate for my research question because I wanted to know how the general community perceived the social problems and possibilities for solutions for Berliner youth. Notes that I took from the lectures of many different speakers gave me enough opinions from many different sources that I did not fear that I had been recording only the ideas of one biased group. My own biases, both as a young person and as an American may have also affected my interpretations of the speakers’ opinions. I learned that I expect everyone to want to fight for their collective future, and that I tend to blame today’s problems on the failure of older generations’ ability to fix them. It was with these expectations in mind that I began collecting and analyzing everything that I heard during my stay in Berlin.
The data that I collected, especially from Wolfgang Janzer, was exactly what I was looking for. He told me that he had witnessed firsthand the disputes in his community as a result of cultural misunderstandings. He went on to say that since the implementation of the Fusion project, he had seen remarkable differences in the way that people interacted with one another, even in the few short years that the facility had been popular. The Carnival of Cultures (a yearly celebration in the streets of Neukolln) was an especially influential event, as it was not a religious celebration of a particular group within the community, but a celebration of everyone full of colors, dancing, games, parades and food. Additionally, though Manege is not a religiously based institution, their communal acknowledgement of holidays like Ramadan, inviting the whole community to a feast at sundown, introduced a way of celebrating religious differences together. Wolfgang’s influence in the community has been so great that he has gained the respect of those who would normally be causing cultural disputes; he often feels that he holds a responsibility to the community to stop tempers from flaring and quarrels from breaking out on the streets. I observed for myself, while on Fusion Street, how the children of all ages come to him for help and conversation, as well as with pride when they have created something new. Wolfgang believes that the pride and trust that he is giving to the community is what is healing it, beginning with the youngest members of society. He feels that when a child learns that he can be friends with someone who celebrates different holidays, or that he can create a beautiful piece of artwork and put himself and his ideas in front of his peers, without fear of ridicule, that child is developing lifelong habits and ideas about the world. Wolfgang’s optimism seems to have been well grounded in reality, because his dream of a Fusion street helping the community has been realized. It seems that the government-funded institutions in the United States could take notes from the efforts of one determined Berliner.
When I first arrived in Berlin, I was unsure of how even personal interviews would allow me to get enough inside the heads of the people that I met with for me to be able to formulate a cohesive thread of answers. It was the theater activities and compositions, where we had to think about being someone other than ourselves, which helped me to stretch the mental barrier and put myself in someone else’s shoes. We were required to repeatedly “be someone that we know that we are not” and this helped me to think outside of myself. I began applying that method when I thought about my research as well as when I performed it, and this helped me believe Wolfgang’s observations. Wolfgang’s idea to improve society by simply teaching children and young adults to work, and play together was such a success that he influenced other people’s ideas. For Wolfgang to gain enough respect in the community that his artwork was not destroyed and that he had the authority to step in and prevent a conflict, he must have created social change that made the entire community turn their heads and acknowledge the success of his methods. By the end of the summer, it was Wolfgang Janzer that I chose to portray in the final composition performance because I had already spent so much time pretending to be inside his head and experiences that I felt a transition to his persona would be an easy transition from my own.
The final composition process as a whole made the interpretation of my research in Berlin a much easier procedure. My normal thought process when I research a topic does not involve how to communicate my findings in any way except through writing or presentation of a report. The composition process not only helped me get into the thoughts and ideas of the people that I interviewed, but also forced me to think about how it would be most effective, dramatic, and useful to communicate my ideas. While it may not be practical for government agencies to receive a dramatic performance in lieu of a research paper, for the general public it seems to be useful to attempt to invoke in them some of your own emotions and feelings. Additionally, thinking of new ways to express ideas assisted each group’s analysis of the individual’s research. Without this additional layer to the group dynamic, we would not have become as involved with individual interpretations of life in Berlin. We had to help each other become used to the idea of performance in front of an audience, as well become accustomed to supporting our internal feelings about what we had learned from our research. Some of the struggles that the youth arts group had with the creation of our final composition had to do with these issues, demonstrating the need for a program like the one that Wolfgang Janzer put together to help children become confident in their own opinions and feelings, as well as accepting of others’. If I could have a chance to continue my research of his methods and success, I would like to someday begin a Fusion program in the United States, with his guidance. I believe that America has many of the same social problems, and because we are a much bigger nation than the city of Berlin, we have many more diversity issues that could be dealt with by the same means that Wolfgang Janzer used. A continuation of his project in the states might prove to be an effective method of social change, as well as a continuation of an interesting research project. If we could initiate a change in the minds of children, their future would be capable of choosing a different path from the destructive course that it is now following.
Have no innate empathy:
There lies our future.
Every second three babies are born, with a world average of 358,192 births a day. Beginning at that instant in time, the harsh reality is that the environment in which a child is raised, including the position and ethnicity of the parents and even the area in which the child grows up, will greatly affect its worldviews and goals later in life. People who have been forced to grow up in poverty stricken areas may never be able to experience the freedom of learning to practice an art, beyond what is necessary to survive in day to day life. Children who never get a chance to have playmates from other social and cultural backgrounds may grow up not understanding the concept of equality as it applies to the human race. The social ramifications of such misunderstandings can be seen throughout our world today, from the small-scale gang wars over home turf to the religious wars that never cease to rage. With the thousands lives that are being created every day, there are surprisingly few adults who are working towards creating equal opportunities for the youth, even in the most well developed of countries. I was lucky enough to be one of the privileged few that grew up being shown that I should treat everyone with equal respect. I was also fortunate to be given the opportunity to interact with those who are not as lucky as I was. The perspective that I gained in the United States made me curious enough to want to study the efforts of other countries to give opportunities to youth in underprivileged populations.
In the flamboyantly artistic city of Berlin, it seemed that the city and community might go to greater lengths for the Berliner youth than the under-funded programs in the United States. I thought that Berlin’s cultural background might ensure that the youth culture was receiving the guidance that it needs in order to prevent the repetition of past mistakes, limitations, and prejudices, at least within the confines of the artistic community. My research question therefore developed into the following: how are underprivileged youth in the vibrantly artistic city of Berlin being given their opportunity to become educated and tolerant, especially through the arts? I chose the education in the arts as a general representation of the attention being given to the youth of underprivileged communities, and their respective futures. My reasoning was based on what I have seen in the United States; several programs have been developed to assist underprivileged youth by giving them opportunities that they would not usually have, such as an after school program in the arts. These same programs are those that are studying the social effects of the youth who went to such after school programs, as opposed to those who had no extra direction put into their social education. Once in Berlin, I found that my choice to use the arts as a representation of the aid being provided to the underprivileged youth was valid; I soon came into contact with the Berlin-based program, Fusion Street. This program was the epitome of the research that I wanted to do in Berlin, as it related both to underprivileged migrant youth in Berlin, who greatly need to learn the benefits of acceptance of other cultures, and to supplementing German artistic education.
The aforementioned “underprivileged” populations of Berlin are often comprised of migrant couples and families, attempting to make a living in a country that does not readily accept migrant cultures. For example, there are vocal sections of the German government who are opposed to building mosques, and are generally against the Muslim and Turkish populations’ right to be an integral part of Germany. These prejudices, while not held by the majority of the German population, are a basis for social conflict and violence in Berlin. In migrant majority sectors, such as Kreutzberg, children grow up within a community that does not diversify its members purposefully. It is therefore not their fault when they grow up without having had contact with other cultures and perspectives. All they know is what they have been shown in local schools and playgroups, organized by parents who are concerned with their children’s safety, and therefore want to keep them close to home and the culture that they know. When their children grow up without a sense of cultural relativism or a world outside their own, it is no wonder that conflicts arise between cultures. The cultural conflict issue is certainly not specific to Germany, as we have seen through religious wars all over the world, and cultural battles that are occurring in the Middle East at this very moment. Neither is the general problem of cultural misunderstanding one that has originated in the youth of these cultures; the problem stems from the prejudices of the adults and leaders of the community. However, the youth may be the solution to the problem. With proper well-rounded education, as well as adults condoning more open-minded behavior, the cycle of distrust and violence between different cultures can come to an end. It is towards this end that Fusion Street, conveniently located in Kreutzberg, is working.
Fusion Street is an ideal place to find hope for the future. It is a facility run by Wolfgang Janzer and his wife, but created solely for the children of the community, regardless of age or cultural background. Wolfgang developed the idea for a cultural center for youth based on the social disorder and prejudice that he saw in Kreutzberg and the surrounding area, and cultural experiences that he had in London. His simple solution was to create a place for development and free expression where children could learn that everyone was accepted, right in their hometown. Fusion Street created a facility in the center of Neukolln where children can go to do homework with the help of tutors, play outside in the street without fear of cars, and create artistic projects of their choice and method. There was extensive thought put into the creation of the Manege building, with a large padded gymnasium room where children can learn acrobatics or perform on the stage, a backyard with room for volleyball or just outdoor hide and seek, a sound studio for the development of musical talent, a studio with room for dance classes, and a wood and paper shop full of projects in progress. Every wall on the inside and outside is decorated with art, masks and paint that the children who are regulars at the Manege facility have designed and created themselves. The whimsical nature of the facility is that this type of play-work is never finished. As soon as one project is finished or one wall is decorated, there is always one more in need of help or refurbishment, ready to take its place. After seeing the beautiful facility, I was forced to reconsider the methods with which I was going to perform my study of the reasons behind and the progress of Manege. When I first read about Manege and the Fusion project online, I imagined that the participants were all over the age of 10, and would be fluent enough in English and aware enough of their surroundings to converse with me about their experiences. After viewing Manege, however, I saw that the day-to-day population was around 9 years old, and the best information that I could get would be from the director, Wolfgang Janzer. He worked face to face with the children every day, and was able to judge the progress that his efforts were making in the community.
Therefore, the main body of my research about Fusion Street was conducted through an interactive interview with Wolfgang Janzer himself, in which I was given a tour of the facilities, as well as allowed to ask unlimited questions about whatever I saw. As we wandered through the facility I kept my camera handy to photograph any images that captured the magnificence of the facility, which was not at first visible on the surface. The first time I visited Fusion Street, I walked the entire street and was amazed that the artwork and walls that had no unintentional graffiti over them. (I later learned from Wolfgang that the other members of the community seldom defiled the creations of the children; they felt that they had taken a part in the act of creation, and so no one tried to destroy anything.) My method of question and answer, as well as intimate observation of the inner workings of the facility and project, was the best way for me to gather information. I saw for myself the types of people that worked and played there, and what I could not see for myself in a few visits, I learned from Wolfgang, who has been there every day since the beginning of the program. He shared his observations about how interactions grew and developed, as well as the general affects that he saw in the community. His assistance was crucial, because he had been living inside my research for far longer than I have been curious about it. His participation also eliminated some of the bias that my observations alone might have brought to my research. Although I felt slightly limited because I did not have the time or language skills to develop a relationship with the children who participated in activities at Manege, and I was therefore unable to conduct interviews directly with the people affected by the project, I gleaned enough information from what I saw to be able to interpret Wolfgang’s comments and answers to my questions. Had I not been able to use his eyes to see the social situation in Neukolln, I would have feared that my perspective as an outsider was making me prejudiced. It is possible that I have now traded my own prejudices on the social situation in Neukolln for Wolfgang’s, but I suspect that someone who has lived in and done so much for a community must have a more realistic view than I could ever bring.
Fortunately, I also had several other methods of gathering information about the social situation and the education systems in Berlin. The speakers that came to class to talk about their experiences in many fields, from education to sports, each contributed to the conclusions that I drew in answer to my project. Getting inside just Wolfgang Janzer’s head may not have been enough, but experiencing the lives of the other speakers as well gave me a well rounded image of the average view. I was not directly conducting interviews with these people, but I think that this allowed me to see their feelings on issues that they considered a natural part of the larger issues that they were discussing. Though this limited me to rarely discussing my project outright with them, the fact that they expressed enough of their views without even meaning to, shows just how prevalent social conflict and its solutions can be. The interview and observation methods were appropriate for my research question because I wanted to know how the general community perceived the social problems and possibilities for solutions for Berliner youth. Notes that I took from the lectures of many different speakers gave me enough opinions from many different sources that I did not fear that I had been recording only the ideas of one biased group. My own biases, both as a young person and as an American may have also affected my interpretations of the speakers’ opinions. I learned that I expect everyone to want to fight for their collective future, and that I tend to blame today’s problems on the failure of older generations’ ability to fix them. It was with these expectations in mind that I began collecting and analyzing everything that I heard during my stay in Berlin.
The data that I collected, especially from Wolfgang Janzer, was exactly what I was looking for. He told me that he had witnessed firsthand the disputes in his community as a result of cultural misunderstandings. He went on to say that since the implementation of the Fusion project, he had seen remarkable differences in the way that people interacted with one another, even in the few short years that the facility had been popular. The Carnival of Cultures (a yearly celebration in the streets of Neukolln) was an especially influential event, as it was not a religious celebration of a particular group within the community, but a celebration of everyone full of colors, dancing, games, parades and food. Additionally, though Manege is not a religiously based institution, their communal acknowledgement of holidays like Ramadan, inviting the whole community to a feast at sundown, introduced a way of celebrating religious differences together. Wolfgang’s influence in the community has been so great that he has gained the respect of those who would normally be causing cultural disputes; he often feels that he holds a responsibility to the community to stop tempers from flaring and quarrels from breaking out on the streets. I observed for myself, while on Fusion Street, how the children of all ages come to him for help and conversation, as well as with pride when they have created something new. Wolfgang believes that the pride and trust that he is giving to the community is what is healing it, beginning with the youngest members of society. He feels that when a child learns that he can be friends with someone who celebrates different holidays, or that he can create a beautiful piece of artwork and put himself and his ideas in front of his peers, without fear of ridicule, that child is developing lifelong habits and ideas about the world. Wolfgang’s optimism seems to have been well grounded in reality, because his dream of a Fusion street helping the community has been realized. It seems that the government-funded institutions in the United States could take notes from the efforts of one determined Berliner.
When I first arrived in Berlin, I was unsure of how even personal interviews would allow me to get enough inside the heads of the people that I met with for me to be able to formulate a cohesive thread of answers. It was the theater activities and compositions, where we had to think about being someone other than ourselves, which helped me to stretch the mental barrier and put myself in someone else’s shoes. We were required to repeatedly “be someone that we know that we are not” and this helped me to think outside of myself. I began applying that method when I thought about my research as well as when I performed it, and this helped me believe Wolfgang’s observations. Wolfgang’s idea to improve society by simply teaching children and young adults to work, and play together was such a success that he influenced other people’s ideas. For Wolfgang to gain enough respect in the community that his artwork was not destroyed and that he had the authority to step in and prevent a conflict, he must have created social change that made the entire community turn their heads and acknowledge the success of his methods. By the end of the summer, it was Wolfgang Janzer that I chose to portray in the final composition performance because I had already spent so much time pretending to be inside his head and experiences that I felt a transition to his persona would be an easy transition from my own.
The final composition process as a whole made the interpretation of my research in Berlin a much easier procedure. My normal thought process when I research a topic does not involve how to communicate my findings in any way except through writing or presentation of a report. The composition process not only helped me get into the thoughts and ideas of the people that I interviewed, but also forced me to think about how it would be most effective, dramatic, and useful to communicate my ideas. While it may not be practical for government agencies to receive a dramatic performance in lieu of a research paper, for the general public it seems to be useful to attempt to invoke in them some of your own emotions and feelings. Additionally, thinking of new ways to express ideas assisted each group’s analysis of the individual’s research. Without this additional layer to the group dynamic, we would not have become as involved with individual interpretations of life in Berlin. We had to help each other become used to the idea of performance in front of an audience, as well become accustomed to supporting our internal feelings about what we had learned from our research. Some of the struggles that the youth arts group had with the creation of our final composition had to do with these issues, demonstrating the need for a program like the one that Wolfgang Janzer put together to help children become confident in their own opinions and feelings, as well as accepting of others’. If I could have a chance to continue my research of his methods and success, I would like to someday begin a Fusion program in the United States, with his guidance. I believe that America has many of the same social problems, and because we are a much bigger nation than the city of Berlin, we have many more diversity issues that could be dealt with by the same means that Wolfgang Janzer used. A continuation of his project in the states might prove to be an effective method of social change, as well as a continuation of an interesting research project. If we could initiate a change in the minds of children, their future would be capable of choosing a different path from the destructive course that it is now following.
