Schools

GES-2 staff hold daily activities for schoolchildren structured around current programmes at the House of Culture, its architecture and ecology. We help children and teenagers with their projects and research activities, work with them to create special events, provide and decorate a tree for New Year celebrations, and put GES-2’s resources at the disposal of school teachers.

Photo by Anya Todich

We treat everyone involved in our projects as equals. Our aim is to help students and teachers to develop skills and competences that are relevant today, to interest them in art and culture, and help them to seek and find answers to their own questions in the future.

We are keen for groups of school students of all ages to come and participate in our programmes. Young people who meet in various clubs are also welcome. We work with teachers of Russian language and literature, world artistic culture, history and history of art, as well as teacher trainers, theorists, and organisers.

Getting in touch

You can register on our site to take part in GES-2 activities for school groups. Teachers and representatives of parent groups who wish to come and work with us can make contact via schools@v-a-c.org.

Visiting GES-2

We have three visit formats for school groups.

Getting to know us

Registration

We offer interactive sessions built around the current arts programme, architecture and history of GES-2, and addressing important aspects of contemporary culture. The sessions are in hybrid format and may include mediation techniques, games, creative workshops, and body-oriented practices.

The sessions last 1.5–2 hours with participants divided into two groups of up to fifteen people each. Each group works with an "educator“—a humanities specialist with teaching skills who structures the session, focusing on group dynamics and taking account of ages of the schoolchildren taking part.

All sessions are designed to harmonize with requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard and can complement the school curriculum in art (world artistic culture), literature, social studies and history.

You can enrol your school class for a session at GES-2 by clicking on the “Registration” button. Choose a date and time and follow the prompts.

A day at GES-2

A programme lasting several hours is designed by GES-2 staff in collaboration with the teacher and sometimes also with students, based on the specific educational objective and what the class is currently studying at school. The group spends several hours at GES-2 where the session is led by educators, teachers and the students themselves.

If you have an idea for a session linked to the GES-2 arts programme and projects, please send us an email at schools@v-a-c.org and we will think how to organize it.

Mini class residency at GES-2

If you enjoyed your visit to GES-2 and want to come back, we invite teachers and students to work with our curators and educators to design a series of meetings at the House of Culture for the whole of the school year or for any period longer than one month.

These meetings can complement work on a curriculum subject at school or they can be over and above the school curriculum. If you are a teacher and have any questions or ideas on how your class could benefit from this format, please send an email to schools@v-a-c.org with “Mini Residence [school number, class number]” in the subject line.

Support for school projects

How to do research and how to structure projects are important skills for schoolchildren today. By preparing a project or doing research, children and teenagers not only gain new knowledge about their subject; they also develop soft skills such as time management, self-organization, teamwork and critical thinking.

GES-2 has a programme that offers support for project and research work by teenagers in school grades 8–10. Participants, who are selected through an open-call, follow an intensive course through the school year, coming together for workshops and to discuss their work.

All projects and research are given expert support by GES-2 curators and educators. The results are presented to an audience at the House of Culture at the end of the school year.

Work with teachers

Engaging with teachers is an important part of our work. Teachers of various subjects, teacher trainers, theorists and school administrators are the key agents in interaction between schools and cultural institutions.

We want the House of Culture to be a forum for the teaching community, a platform where teachers meet, exchange what they have learnt, initiate joint projects and share best practice. With this aim in mind we organize regular meetings and projects for teachers. Watch this page for announcements.

Special events in the programme for schools

Commitment to joint cultural production is a core value of GES-2 House of Culture. We do all we can to involve children, teenagers, parents and teachers in planning and creating our events and projects.

Winter and Summer Project Labs

Twice a year, in the winter and summer holidays, middle- and high-school students team with GES-2 educators and curators, as well as artists, designers, photographers and other creative professionals to work on a range of projects. In the winter of 2022, students designed and developed a live-action role-playing game, “DK-verse,” for 300 participants which went ahead at the House of Culture in April 2023. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, high-school students tried their hand at urban anthropology, preparing research and formatting the results as zines. A winter lab on music festivals, held In January 2023, forged a team which went on to organize the Djust Fofanov School Band Festival (“Djust Fofanov” is a russification of “Just for Fun”), which was held at the House of Culture on 17 September 2023.