Mission Statement
The Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft (BAG) Spiel & Theater is the leading association for theatre work with and by children and young people in Germany.
It enables children and young people to participate in artistic, aesthetic theatre practice across a range of different formats at a national and international level, as well as fostering reflection, organisation and innovation. As an umbrella organisation for theatre work, it takes its bearings from current challenges in social contexts and is active at various levels: structure, subject, society.
STRUCTURE
BAG Spiel & Theater is actively engaged at a specialist, educational and cultural policy level to achieve a reliable infrastructure and range of services and activities for its member associations. It also makes funding available for national and international projects in the areas of theatre education and amateur theatre as well as for collaborations with schools, youth education, teaching and research.
SUBJECT
BAG Spiel & Theater campaigns for children and young people in three respects. It makes spaces available for them to experience their own expressive abilities and shape their surroundings. It supports meetings and productive collaborations with others in an ensemble and enables social-artistic positioning both in front of and with the audience.
Fostering a love of acting, enabling and expanding cultural and aesthetic education and creating free spaces for acting in society represent a necessary, reciprocal structure of conditions for the umbrella organisation.
SOCIETY
Via a blend of practice and reflection, BAG Spiel & Theater provides its member associations with structural impulses for professional qualification and innovative development of the services and activities they offer. It offers further training to facilitators and multipliers for the profession as well as giving them the opportunity to take part in transnational and interdisciplinary projects and networking.
The central tenets of the umbrella organisation are to promote democracy, pursue the mandate of civil society and advocating the “International Agreement on the Conduct and Ethics of Theatre Educators” (ÜVET) – see www.bag-online.de.
BAG Spiel & Theater currently represents 21 member associations across Germany which develop and carry out a wide range of theatre services and activities for children and young people.
Passed by the BAG Spiel & Theatre Board of Directors in April 2019.
