There is no Family B

Projects with participatory artistic approaches play an important role at the festival. Different school classes from the canton and city of Zurich are paired with cultural practitioners to develop a variety of artistic formats, often over the course of several months. Their work is shown to a public audience at the festival. The projects for the 2022 edition of the festival are listed below. Schule+Kultur Kanton Zürich and Schulkultur Stadt Zürich is responsible for the financing and coordination of the participatory projects. Below are the projects for the 2022 festival edition. The times and locations of the presentations can be found in the programme.

The students are the reporters of the festival. They observe with curious, inquisitive eyes and take a critical perspective, commenting on and reflecting on the events of the festival. In preparation for the festival and their role as art experts, the students attend and review theater performances, take part in workshops with media and PR professionals and develop interests and questions, which they address in their roles as reporters at the festival.

Over a period of two months, students explore the different narrative modes and working processes of film, with the support of professional film coaches. The students assume leading roles wherever possible: whether with writing, camera, sound, editing, directing, acting, and film music. Inspired by the festival motto "O", the short films they create will premiere at the Blickfelder Festival.

Through a variety of everyday materials, the project week focuses on the playful expression of body and voice. What sounds, melodies and beats can they create? How do movement and voice interconnect? What types of motion narratives emerge from this? The students of the 1st and 2nd primary classes of the Utogrund school develop singular elements in movement and voice experiments, that are later combined into more complex modules through structured improvisations. By the end of the project, the students will develop and present their musical performance as a group, interwoven with the themes and stories that emerged during the development process.

This participatory installation at the festival's center invites young and old to build a network of ball tracks with a creative array of recycled materials. Various tracks run next to each other, sometimes connecting, sometimes simply ending on the square. The scenography team of OFFCUT Zurich oversees this project, offering ideas, work materials, and support for the attending school classes and families.

By playfully addressing themes of sustainability and resource conservation through the creative use of residual materials, a social sculpture is created over the course of the festival. Large, colorful, and full of sounds.

The "MiniMuseumMe" is a museum of objects and the stories of their owners. Grandma's recipe book with the instructions for the world's best cake, her favorite mug, the photo from her old home, or the shells she brought home from her beach vacation. We all have our own set of objects, entwined with personal stories and anecdotes from our family history and everyday life.  

The selection of objects and the writing about one's own history happens in a participatory process with students of the school Unterstrass. Switzerland as a post-migrant society lives from the diversity of its members - the "MiniMeMuseum" wants to appreciate and celebrate this diversity through object and narrative.

Based on "born to shine", a production of the Schauspielhaus Zurich, students deal with the topics of autonomy, belonging, and emancipation, and explore how dance can function as a language and artistic form of expression and communication. The project enables the students to discover differences (diversities) through their artistic work and to experience them as enriching. Through shared experience, fears can be reduced and tolerance and empathy for one another can be cultivated. Questions and topics that will be explored with the students include: How do I want to be seen? What are my 15 minutes of fame? How am I judged from the outside? What do I depend on and who do I depend on? How can I raise my voice - and how will it be heard? In which areas can I shine, and where do I want to have an impact?

Based on questions and topics that are on their minds, the students of the Hatzenbühl secondary school in Nürensdorf immerse themselves in a creative process together with the author Eva Seck and the video and filmmaker Florine Leonie. They experiment with images and sound, try out different forms of language, and do research on music, sound, and audio. They develop a storyboard and find suitable locations for filming. The unique video poems will be presented to the public at the Blickfelder Festival.

If things continue as they are, it doesn't look too good for several species that will soon lose their habitat as a result of climate change, including humans. A group of children from the Schütze school in Zurich has decided to prepare for this. On a newly founded planet, they create a new ecosystem, new creatures, and new living conditions. They are inspired by the animal world, by endemic species, by dinosaurs, and examples from speculative biology. They sketch and perform as newly invented species and build models for the prototype of this new planet, performing at the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art.