Art meets science: Lower Saxony boosts cutting-edge research with millions in funding
The state of Lower Saxony is providing around three million euros in funding from the ‘zukunft.niedersachsen’ (‘future.lower saxony’) programme for the transdisciplinary project ‘Grounding the Human: Lower Saxony’. The project, run by the Science and Art Lab at TU Braunschweig, brings together researchers from universities in Lower Saxony with international artists. The aim is to develop new ideas for healthy, sustainable living in urban and rural areas and to combine art and science in innovative ways. Plans include expanding the artist residency format, two festivals and accompanying impact monitoring.
‘Grounding the Human: Lower Saxony’ is a project of the Science and Art Lab at the Project House of TU Braunschweig and is being realised in collaboration with Forecast, an initiative of skills e.V. from Berlin, which promotes and supports innovative, creative practices of international artists through a mentoring programme. ‘Grounding the Human: Lower Saxony’ connects researchers from universities in Lower Saxony with international artists and supports their collaboration.
“By opening ourselves up to the field of art and launching joint projects, we at TU Braunschweig are creating new opportunities for exchange, reflection and discussion of our broad-based cutting-edge research. These novel approaches include engineering, architecture, life sciences and social sciences. They enable innovative approaches and help us to fulfil our social mission in a variety of ways – especially for people outside the academic world,” says Angela Ittel, President of TU Braunschweig, commenting on the project.
The future of housing and living
The individual collaboration projects revolve around the topic of ‘Healthy Living – Healthy Living Spaces,’ which is described as a central focus in the Lower Saxony Future Agenda. The working phase of up to 24 months will be accompanied by international experts from various disciplines. This will specifically strengthen the interconnection between artistic research and the scientific landscape in Lower Saxony. On behalf of TU Braunschweig, Prof. Elisabeth Endres, Prof. Almut Grüntuch-Ernst and Prof. Tatjana Schneider, among others, are supporting the project as multipliers in order to involve scientists from the field of architecture in the collaborations.
New perspectives through the ‘artist residency’ model
The Science and Art Lab, located in the Project House at TU Braunschweig, is building on its previous, highly successful and, in Germany, still rare experiences in combining art and science as part of ‘Grounding the Human: Lower Saxony’. The plan is to initiate the Artist Residency, which is already established at TU Braunschweig, at other universities in Lower Saxony. Within this format, an artist is invited to spend several months at a university, working in research laboratories and collaborating with scientists. Experience shows that this unusual constellation gives rise to new questions and broadens perspectives on sometimes narrowly defined fields of knowledge.
Two festivals and impact monitoring
Two festivals are planned for ‘Grounding the Human: Lower Saxony’, in which the results – from design objects to audiovisual installations – will be made accessible to a broad public. From the outset, impact monitoring by the Fraunhofer Institute CeRRI is also planned, which will evaluate the transdisciplinary research approaches during the course of the project.
With ‘Grounding the Human: Lower Saxony,’ TU Braunschweig is contributing to methodological innovation, interdisciplinary knowledge production and the international visibility of Lower Saxony as an innovative science location.
About the Science and Art Lab
The Science and Art Lab at Technische Universität Braunschweig is a platform that brings together art and cutting-edge research to promote dialogue between science, art and society. The aim is to open up new perspectives on complex topics and provide food for thought. The Lab creates spaces for experiments, exhibitions, lectures, film evenings and residencies in which scientists and artists work together and jointly build bridges between abstract research topics and the public.