The name says it all: The exploratorium is all about exploration, about your own journey of discovery into the land of sound and the possibilities of playing together. For the founder and director of the exploratorium, Matthias Schwabe, play has always held a special fascination, a source of creativity par excellence. A few years before the exploratorium was founded, he stated that play was “the key to a very fundamental human potential that is of crucial importance not only for children but also for adults”. He always regarded the desire to experimentally explore the world as a key factor in play.
With the exploratorium berlin, he created a space for improvisation 20 years ago in which precisely these moments – exploration, play and experimentation – were taken as starting points to pave the way for artistic creativity for everyone.
The discussion moderated by Mathias Maschat, which marks the start of the 20th anniversary, will revolve around the theoretical approaches of the exploratorium and the practical realisation of the corresponding ideas. Matthias Schwabe will be joined by the two music education professors Jule Greiner and Constaze Rora, who will both contribute their original expertise on the music education approaches (not only) of the exploratorium and place the teaching of artistic creativity in a broader context.
The creative, diverse and improvisational approach to music, playing with voice, movement and instruments and combining music with other arts are important aspects of Jule Greiner’s work. From 1982 to 2002, she worked as a music teacher at the Kreuzberg music school. For more than 20 years she was a lecturer in elementary music pedagogy (EMP) at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2002, she became a professor of EMP and taught at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences until 2024. She has been a lecturer in further and continuing education for teachers and educators for many years. Since 2013, she has been organising the concert series Rapauke macht Musik for children aged 3–6 with Isabel Stegner and musicians from the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
Constanze Rora’s areas of expertise lie in aesthetic education in musical creative play as well as in aesthetic experience in childhood. After several years as a teacher, she was a research assistant at the Institute for Aesthetic Education at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1995 to 2005. From 2005 to 2009, she was a university professor at the Chair of Music Education and Didactics at the University of Leipzig; since 2009, she has been Professor of Music Education and Didactics at the Leipzig University of Music and Theatre.
