The Foundations Sunday is part of this year’s Berlin Foundations Week. On April 1–11, 2014, a number of Berlin-based foundations for the fifth time in a row open their doors and invite interested citizens to get to know them and to get involved. The 5th Berlin Foundations Week again offers a variety of events, exhibitions, and projects that highlight the importance of the foundations’ activities and their everyday impact. This year’s thematic focus is on “Of Life in the City: Responsibility for Change.”

The foundations show where and how they get engaged, putting the spotlight on a potentially defining characteristic of urban life: a shared responsibility for social change and for each other, and a vibrant civil society. It is in our cities that the changes in society can be felt and experienced most clearly: from demographic change to migration and integration, from education and health care to changes in the world of work.

Aspects that will be discussed include processes that can be described by the term “gentrification” as well as current developments in urban planning. Another focus will be on the relationship between the city and its environs. Here, we are witnessing contradictory trends of rural flight on the one hand and urban flight on the other: while rural life is romanticized as a weekend idyll, life in the big city is idealized as a hipster paradise – blinded by the lights of the big city?!

Events in cooperation with the Schering Stiftung

Workshop on “re/searching the city”

11 a.m., Atelier A
Welcome Heike Catherina Mertens, Arts and Culture Director of the Schering Stiftung
Presentation metroZones – Profile and Projects: Who We Are and What We Do

12 noon, Atelier A
Introduction to the methodological toolbox of urban research: field notes, mapping, field photography, soundwalks, surveys (required for workshop participation)

1–5 p.m., Field walks in the urban neighborhood of the Radialsystem V
Workshop “On the Search for the City.” In small groups, participants put the presented urban research methodologies to a practical test. The workshop concludes with a discussion about its findings and results at Atelier A.

6–8 p.m., Atelier A
Discussion Hallen, Höfe, Hütten (Halls, Yards, Huts): Urban Design on the Spree

Lecture on “Images of Sexuality in Old Age – An (Art) Historical Perspective on Andreas Dresen’s Film Wolke 9 (Cloud Nine)”

Anna Mirtschin and Rahel Schrohe
6:45–8 p.m., Studio B

For a long time taboo subjects of our image-driven media world, love and sexuality in old age are becoming part of our public life and advertising industry. Andreas Dresen’s 2008 film “Wolke 9“ (Cloud Nine) is considered to be the catalyst that sparked a new way of looking at and dealing with the topic. The lecture looks at the movie from a historical and image science perspective.