Programmatie

PROGRAMMING ABC-HOUSE 2023/2024

 

FOR PUPILS
Primary and Secondary Education

FULLY BOOKED- SCHOOL VISITS ABC-HOUSE SEPTEMBER 2023 – JUNE 2024

STUDIO UNIVERSALIS
Together with our audience, we will explore the basics of materials and tools. At the center is the rediscovery of simple utility materials such as paper, clay, wood, textiles, … in the fascinating and vast world of the arts.
Feeling, smelling, tasting, experimenting, wondering and associating … are key words that we explore throughout the day and in each studio. But we also seek out underlying narratives and how different artists or disciplines make connections in their own way.

SCHOOL VISIT – WHAT TO EXPECT
A class visit takes a whole day. Small groups of 6 to 8 children are accompanied by an ABC-guide. Together they travel through the studio where the guide engages in dialogue with the children and responds as much as possible to their interests. In this way we try to stimulate curiosity, individual creativity and critical citizenship. The activities are adapted to the age of the children. The children can prepare their own lunch in the spacious kitchen workshop.

Teachers can participate in the activities or find inspiration in the studios and our library.

PRACTICAL
From 12/10/2023 to 21/06/2024
Every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
Max. 25 children per day
Target audiences
Children in their 3rd year of kindergarten
Primary school students
Secondary school students
Price
8 euros per student + 5 euros per student for the cooking workshop
Supervisors do not pay

Project weeks

In addition to day visits, ABC offers schools also the opportunity for more in-depth and long-term work with us. This offer applies to both primary and secondary schools.

Specifically: a class (of max 25 pupils) can use our new ‘laboratory-classroom’ for several weeks to work closely with the ABC-guides on a certain project. In collaboration with the teachers, a variety of themes can be customized to take attainment goals into account.

The approach is associative, interdisciplinary and experiential, and is continually made to link science, technology, philosophy, cooking, math, history and of course, the arts. Classical subjects (such as mathematics and language) also take place during these project weeks. Therefore it is interesting, in the case of a secondary school, to work with a whole team of teachers so that the specialist teachers experientially discover that creativity can play a role in all fields (ABC = ART BASED CURRICULUM).

In this way, schools get in close contact with ABC’s holistic philosophy and the cross-over approach from the inside. The added value, in comparison to regular classes, includes our rich collection (books and materials), the experience of the guides in the field of wide learning and differentiating, and the sophisticated architecture/design that encourages independent research.

Not all research moments take place in the ‘laboratory-classroom’. For certain activities we use other specially equipped areas of the ABC-house: E.g. for technology we work in our workshops, for physical activity we go to the movement space, we do research in the extensive library and we use the garden and kitchen for cooking.

More info?
Send an email to mail@abc-web.be or call us 02 502 00 27.

FOR STUDENTS

The ABC House is open to students from a variety of disciplines (teachers in training, social-cultural work, Project Kunstvakken (project art subjects), artistic education, etc).

INDIVIDUAL
Those who would like to find inspiration for a thesis, an internship project, etc, can consult the collection by appointment. Photocopies can be made and we loan out kamishibai, books and materials under certain conditions.

INTERNSHIPS
ABC offers students from various disciplines the opportunity to do an internship. Students can observe and assist in the development of new projects and also act as ABC-guides in the studios. Call or mail early to request an internship position.

ACTIVE TOURS IN ABC-HOUSE
For groups of students in teacher training courses

ABC wants to inspire future teachers by making it clear that you can also learn by exploring, that you experience a lot by playing and that art and culture can prompt a variety of cross-curricular activities. An ABC-studio is actually a creative learning environment where quite a few ideas can be picked out for classroom practice in terms of interior design as well as educational materials and activities. Specifically, we explore various studios over the course of a whole day and try some activities and materials ourselves. Afterwards, ABC-guides, together with the visitors, search for a possible translation of our approach to their own teaching. That way, we invite future teachers to consciously look, listen and associate.

PRACTICAL
Group visits from 12/10/2023 till 19/06/2024
Thursday from 9:30 to 15:30
Maximum number of participants: 30
Price: 12 euros per person

FOR TEACHERS

The ABC-house is also open to teachers and other professionals. Primarily as guides of their students/children, but also for specific seminars for groups of teachers.

ABC offers teachers the opportunity to work on a ‘curriculum of the inner life,’ where the mind, emotions and the soul are addressed. We believe -also based on our experiences- in a holistic approach to education, which considers people not only functioning beings, but approaches them as complete individuals with dreams, ideas, imaginations…
We want to communicate such insights experientially with the participants by allowing them to become acquainted with the strength of the collection (resources of the house), and how they can be used in the classroom: by doing research yourself, through associative and interdisciplinary work, etc. Other points of interest are personality development, visual literacy, and awareness of flexible classroom style: teachers experience firsthand the impact of space on the learning process, the importance of architecture, interior design, light, etc.

PRACTICAL
Visits from 12/10/2023 till 19/06/2024
On Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9:30 to 15:30
Maximum number of participants: 30
Price: 220 euros + 21% VAT per guide.
A guide works with up to 10 people

Those who would like to gain inspiration for their own classroom project can consult the collection by appointment. Spot copies can be made and under certain conditions we also lend kamishibai stories, books and materials.

PRACTICAL:
contact us for an appointment.

CONSULTATION DAYS ABC LIBRARY

ABC RESEARCH CENTER
FREE RESEARCH – CONSULTATION DAYS ABC LIBRARY
Several days a month the house is open for free research and consultation in our library. Teachers, educators, students, parents, scientists, artists and other interested parties can spend an entire afternoon finding inspiration, researching, preparing lessons, working on internship projects and meeting each other. Upon request, we are happy to give a tour of our collection or introduction to our way of working. An ABC staff member can support you in your research. Give us a call if you want to come, fresh coffee will be waiting for you!

PRACTICAL
Monday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
22/01, 19/02, 04/03, 18/03, 15/04, 29/04, 13/05, 27/05, 10/06 and 24/06/2024
Tuesday from 5.30 p.m. tot 9.30 p.m.
16/01, 30/01, 13/02, 27/02, 12/03, 26/03, 09/04, 23/04, 07/05, 21/05, 04/06 and 18/06/2024
Other consultation times are available by appointment.

 

IN GROUP

During the Carnival holidays and the second week of the Easter holidays, the ABC-house will be open for groups from after-school care or other (youth) organisations.
We can invite a maximum of 30 children per day from primary schools and guide small groups through the ABC-house.

PRACTICAL
For children of 3rd year of kindergarten till the sixth grade of primary school.
Max. 30 children/group.
Autumn holidays from Monday 30/10 till Friday 03/11/2023
Carnival holidays from Monday 12/02 till Friday 16/02/2024
Easter holidays from Monday 08/04 till Friday 12/04/2024
The whole day from 9:30 till 16.30
Price : 8 euros/child in case of an organization from Brussels, 12 euros/kind for organisations outside of Brussels.
Reduced Paspartoe Group Pass
Adults who accompany the children don’t pay

HOLIDAY COURSES

Bookings in April 2024, date to be confirmed.

Holiday courses 2024
Holiday workshop 1: from 01/07 to 05/07/2024
Holiday workshop 2: from 26/08 to 30/08/2024

PRACTICAL
– In Dutch
– ABC holiday courses are focused on primary school children (first to sixth grade). We provide a mix of playful, creative and energetic activities.
– Children are divided by age into groups of max. 10, support is provided by experienced ABC-guides.
– Opening hours: from 9:00 to 16:00 – additional care is possible beforehand from 8:30 and afterwards until 17:00.
– Price: 150 euros /first child, 140 euros /second child, 120 euros/third child (family) / 60 euros Paspartoe reduction rate.
– Bring a packed lunch.

Holiday Course Themes

2017
Anno 1417, A journey to the Middle Ages
In this course we explore the crafts, arts and daily life in a medieval village and city…

prepare your own medieval meals, feel the passion of courtly love and listen to Gregorian chants…
make knight toys, pointy hats, helmets or coats of arms.
go on a pilgrimage to distant lands and tell stories of Floris and Blancheflour of the Round Table and of Robin Hood…
build castles, study Gothic cathedrals and let light shine through rose windows.
Practice, with our swords, the martial arts of the knights and shoot with crossbows and catapults…
For the final tournament, you choose: are you a minstrel, queen, squire, knight or noblewoman… Or maybe you prefer the court jester?

Sculptures & Installations
We draw inspiration from all cultures, from classical examples to modernism.
Soap, wood, clay, stone, plaster, wire, paper and cardboard, found objects and natural materials are abundantly available to design and reinforce your own creations.
Monumental land art installations or small portrait heads, mobile sculptures or kinetic art, assemblages or one-minute statues…
Modern sculpture transcends tradition and experiments with great freedom, even in public places.
We visit the studios of Michelangelo, Rodin and Brancusi, Arp, Henri Moore and Niki de Saint Phalle, Dubuffet, Giacometti and Christo, of Picasso, Miró and Barbara Hepworth, of Tinguely, Richard Long, Joseph Beuys, and more.
The different techniques and choice of materials of all these artists excite the imagination of the individual creative process of our young participants.

2016
Protest
From the Arab Spring to the gladiator revolt in ancient Rome, the suffragettes, Argentine mothers or Indignados, etc, everywhere in the world and throughout time, people gather together to make their voices heard and to stand up for their rights, dreams and ideals. The holiday course, “Protest” takes you through the turbulent history of protest marches and parades. Through revolutionary songs, films, visuals, books, etc, you’ll find out all about artistic rebels like the Dadaists, the anti-apartheid movement, or environmental actions of Greenpeace, to name just a few examples. Print graffiti stencils, disguise yourself as a sandwich-board man, make protest hats and banners, think up slogans and learn chants, practice the South African Toyi Toyi dance, just to name a few of the many activities. Get up, stand up!

Good Night:
For centuries the night has spoken to the human imagination, and to artists in particular, thanks to our associations with darkness and the subsconscious.
In the week-long course ‘Good Night’ we examine many aspects of that mysterious period between sunset and sunrise.
We observe our dreams, the moon and the stars in the black theater, transform the night into day in the ABC-nightclub, go hunting with nocturnal animals and discover where and how other animals sleep, make nightlights, cast candles or paint the darkest black, delve into ghosts and witches, phantoms and vampires, enjoy the Thousand and One Night stories … and many many more.

2015
Stones
Where do stones come from? Why do people love to collect them or carry them so close to their hearts? Stones speak to the imagination. Sometimes they just have a beautiful shape, sometimes they lie well in the hand to skip on the water, or they give us a sense of security and protection. But stones can be very useful as well. The time when the first humans lived was not called the ‘Stone Age’ for nothing. Stones were used for survival: flints, stone tools, stone caves, etc. We’ll discover all these dimensions of stones during this holiday course experience.

Mobiles and Kinetic Art
The pleasure we experience as people, watching or experiencing movement, is the same as the experience of color and sound: think of a waving flag, dancing flames, the sparkling water of a waterfall, the rocking of a swing, rolling marbles in a marble run, etc. Mobiles however, don’t have centuries of history, it is a relatively recent art form. Artists like Duchamp and Rodchenko were already experimenting with movement in the 20s, but it was not until the 30s that Alexander Calder came up with his fascinating moving sculptures. We’ll follow in his footsteps, seeking the poetic essence of the movement the mobile can evoke.

2014
Jewellery
Everyone loves to make him/herself beautiful, or to look the way s/he wants. But jewellery is more than just bracelets, necklaces and earrings… The prehistoric man wore bones around his neck to show off his good catch. Using various materials, jewellery was created to protect us, show who we are or to cheer us up. Leather bracelets or glittering earrings, amulets that protect you from harm, or medallions with a picture to never forget your bunny. Or how about a tattoo in the style of tough sailors? And do edible jewels exist?

Paul Klee / Puppets
Paul Klee made many and varied works of art during his lifetime. We’ll make an imaginary journey with him through the world of our dreams, where the craziest animals exist and fabulous dolls come to life. Klee made fifty inspiring puppets for his son Felix with which they could play puppet theatre together for hours. In this course we’re going to try it ourselves, and then it’s time for a collective hand puppet show!

Visual Music
Since ancient times artists have attempted to make music for the eye with moving images and light effects, similar to the effect of sound to the ear. How do images and music influence each other, how do they strengthen the other, how do we achieve color in music and sound in the picture? The holiday course, Visual Music, is a week of experimenting with sound and image: listening to Kandinsky or Matisse in the visual music-gallery, building rhythmic toys and instruments in the workshop, drawing or painting music, enjoy musical narratives or ‘compose’ a movie soundtrack with recycled material in the foley-studio… A swinging adventure to open eyes, ears and hearts to the “visual sound of music.”

2013
Pop-up
There’s a lot more in books than you might think, occasionally something even dares to jump out! During this week’s course we’ll get our nose in the books and investigate how exactly these pop-ups work.
And it turns out paper isn’t the only thing you can make pop-ups with…

Ceramics
Pottery, designing your own dishes, enjoying a clay massage or a facial mask… in this course clay takes a whole variety of forms. The children themselves experience the process of clay modeling, drying, baking, glazing. With the help of a real kiln.

Design
“Design is everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It’s a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda and philosophy.” Erik Adigard

Just about everything around us is designed: objects, buildings, websites, systems, cars, fashion, games, landscapes… We use our own creativity, brainstorm and try to think of a design ourselves and realize it. In the various ABC-workshops we work around the art of packaging, graphic design, toy design, fashion and textile design, interior design, etc.

2012
Magic
Astrology, incantations, alchemy, witchcraft… these are all forms of magic, the supposed art of manipulating reality from the belief that one can make contact with the supernatural. In this course the children explore the magical powers of their imaginations, and they see how different cultures look to ‘sorcery’: Chinese number magic or morning rituals, making voodoo dolls from Africa or North American kachinas… but they will also become enchanted by, among other things, optical illusions and fanciful kamishibai stories populated by witches, dragons and sultans…

Mosaic
Mosaics consist of pieces of colored stone, glass, ceramic tiles and other materials. The Mesopotamians were already using mosaics made of terracotta and colored clay cones 5,000 years ago to decorate columns and walls. The children will discover inspiring examples from the past, but also look for Invader graffiti tiles in the streets of Brussels. Also on the program: stamping mosaics, pebble painting, photo and torn paper collages, pixel mosaic, etc.

Renaissance
This holiday course is a journey back in time to a world of 500 years ago: the Renaissance, one of the most fascinating periods in Western history. A time when art and culture flourished and classical antiquity underwent a rebirth. Who would not want to live in an era where public entertainment and games were all the rage, men and women wrote the most beautiful love poems and the potato was an exotic delicacy? Among all the superb architecture and painting we’ll create drawings using a perspective mirror, fold a paper hellfire, listen to Gregorian chants and polyphonic Renaissance music, or think of love poetry in terza-rima. E tutti quanti…

2011
Light
Playing with light, making light, viewing natural light and color, creating coziness with candle light, performing shadow theater, experimenting with the effect of black lights and going wild in the light of a stroboscope… it’s just a small sampling of the activities of this holiday course. Experiencing and creating various types of light, each with their own atmosphere is key in these workshops.

Mail Art
A holiday course in which communication becomes art. No quick tapping on a keyboard for the umpteenth mail or sending a quick message, but communication at its best and in all its luscious forms. Blooming envelopes, making all kinds of cards, writing secret letters and love letters, making hand-made paper, rubber stamps and postage stamps… we try this and so much more in Mail Art.

Sculptures
Theme ‘sculptures’, which means a course of chiseling, cutting, carving, grinding, kneading, molding, etc. We go in search of the most inspiring examples in art history, and then… Action! Improvising a sculpture with objects in space, transforming a 2D painting into a 3D tableau vivant, building “One Minute Sculptures” à la Erwin Wurm, or philosophize about who deserves a statue, and most importantly, why…

WEDNESDAY WORKSHOPS

Every Wednesday, from 13:30 to 16:30, we open the ABC-house for a workshop. Children from primary school, both in the immediate vicinity of the ABC-house (around Gaucheret) and from other Brussels neighborhoods, get busy accompanied by an ABC-guide. Experiment, play games, philosophise, listen to stories, cook, move, paint, build or tinker… the ABC-collection gives rise to a plethora of different creative and playful activities.

PRACTICAL:
Every Wednesday from 04/10/2023 till 19/06/2024
From 14:00 till 16:30
Price: 150 euros /first child, 140 euros /second child, 120 euros/third child (family) / 60 euros Paspartoe reduction rate

Additional care is possible beforehand from 13:30 and afterwards until 17:00.
We are currently working with a waiting list. More information? catherine@abc-web.be

WEDNESDAY WORKSHOP FOR YOUNGSTERS

Do you like to leave the beaten path? Do you like to read between the lines? Together for a whole afternoon of ‘tentacular’ thinking, exploring, connecting, deepening, getting lost, imagining, philosophizing, playing, gaining special insights and discovering and developing your own interests in the process.
We work in thematic series of five Wednesdays. You register for each series or for the whole year (3 series, 15 workshops).

PRACTICAL
On Wednesdays from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
For young people aged 12 to 15 years
Cost, including materials: 60 euros per series of 5 workshops or 150 euros for 3 series (15 workshops)
Registration via mail@abc-web.be

Theme 1, 08/11, 15/11, 22/11, 29/11 and 06/12/2023
Theme 2, 10/01, 17/01, 24/01, 31/01 and 07/02/2024
Theme 3, 28/02, 06/03, 13/03, 20/03 and 27/03/2024

FAMILY WEEKEND

ABC opens its doors one weekend each season for the whole family to discover the ABC-house.
The program will be communicated several weeks in advance.
Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 17:00 – all ages – come and go freely.

Next family weekends in 2024
Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th of February 2024 – program
Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th of October 2024

LINKS

  • ART BASICS for CHILDREN

  • NICHE HUB – A+ Architecture in Belgium

  • [LAB 1030.35] Art Basics for Children – HUB

  • film ABC huis