UNESCO World Document Heritage ('Memory of the World') in cultural education

The model project Tell me Your Story for the participation of refugees and civic engagement is based on the 'children's fairy tales' by the Brothers Grimm. In an innovative approach to cultural mediation, which focuses on mutual storytelling instead of the one-sided 'learning' of a culture, the model project Tell me Your Story, initiated and developed by the author, conceived and implemented a variety of didactic and artistic working materials. These enable a dialogue across linguistic and cultural barriers across the common memory horizon of the fairy tales. Nothing else in the diverse and generational work of the Brothers Grimm has such international distribution and artistic, literary, media and scientific resonance as their fairy tale collection. There are fairy tales and stories all over the world. This also makes them a suitable starting point for communication in integration, inclusion and participation projects and opens a fruitful field of research for cultural heritage studies as well as for cultural education - both rather young scientific disciplines. The project Tell me Your Story is a model for further moderated contact and communication projects between refugees and citizens in Germany and the research on it reaches out to related spheres in education as well as politics. Thematic fields of integration and participation are analyzed as well as the chances and possibilities of world heritage and world documentary heritage in the field of impact of cultural identity and its integrative potential.

Dr. Susanne Völker studied art history, philosophy, law and museum management in Hamburg and Vienna and did her Ph.D. in the field of Cultural studies. Susanne Völker has been head of the cultural department of the city of Kassel since 2017. Previously, the art historian and cultural manager was entrusted with project management for the new Brothers Grimm exhibition hall GRIMMWELT Kassel. In 2015 she was able to successfully open the house as founding director. She focuses on the themes of cultural development planning, cultural promotion, development of cultural institutions, integration and inclusion, cultural and World Heritage education.