The foundation for this manifesto emerged in the fall of 2020 through the collaboration between artists and children in various workshops at the Floating University. Practitioners came and suggested forms of work, materials, or themes within the framework of the Floating Kids Uni, and then the children transformed them, often making proposals. Negotiations took place in the midst of the action. Sometimes sentences were free flowing, sometimes adults translated the doing into sentences, and sometimes children planted sentences in the Floating. Ten Sentences were compiled from all of this and translated by Ute Lindenbeck, Sophia Tabatadze and Sabine Zahn. The three of us take the liberty of speaking a language for the children, because the WE we are talking about here are the children. The manifesto is supposed to be a bridge, a tunnel, a morse code or a portal. It tries to communicate something of what otherwise remains not only invisible, unnamed, and misunderstood, but above all, unused. As Floating Kids Uni, we believe that the kids’ way of acting can move us all forward. Behind every sentence there is an experience and situation that has made us realise something new about this. The manifesto is therefore a call for the Floating Association and its programming on a small scale, and also for the relationship between art, society and action on a large scale to make the effort to invent formats of action WITH children, not just for them. Maybe then, someday, there will be no need for Floating Kids Uni. Ahoi!

Floating Building Sport
Workshop with Martin Kaltwasser (artist) 

A future idea from the district for the reconstruction of the rainwater retention basin is the design of a sports area, because there are not enough in Kreuzberg. In exchange with the participants the artist Martin Kaltwasser worked on this idea and with the help of collected and donated wood they developed and built sports equipment  that haven’t existed before and immediately tried their functionality. Thus, ice hockey sticks, two goals and a puck were created, because the water in the pool was frozen, a ping pong table, a stemming weight made of wood and finally the room construction, which Martin built in many months on the float, was inaugurated as  floating sports hall. Here the ping pong table is sometimes used for playing or as a big table for research, the field hockey sticks were already used on the dried mud and the wooden weight was lifted by different visitors. The beginning for a sport field in exchange with the place is made, we are curious about further developments. 

Eatable City
Workshop with Sophia Tabatadze (Artist and member of the association)

Rubber boot tours in the ice water, climbing in the “iceberg”, harvesting and baking together. We discover and test what you can eat in the Floating Univerity. Sophias Thoughts after she has worked with the Kindergarden group: For the 5-7 years old kids there is no real program needed, if they know each other, they play really well without getting bored or need to be entertained. Free play is the best way to get closer to the place: the mud and the Urban Forest (building on the Floating) with the stairs and little rooms are particularly interesting. 
Photo documentation: Constanze Flamme

Shadow Creatures and Ghost Lights
Workshop with Atefeh Kheirabadi and Mehrad Sepahnia (Media artists)

When the lights turn on in the floating buildings during evenings, the shadows of their users are visible far across the site. In autumn it gets dark early and due to falling temperatures it becomes quieter in the rainwater basin. Together with the participants from the neighboring youth art school FRIX, Atefeh Kheirabadi and Mehrad Sepahnia transformed the floating buildings into giant shadow theater stages and created figures that tell their own story of the place in shadow and light.
Photo documentation: Constanze Flamme

Flotation Zoo Island
Workshop with Raul Walch (Künstler)

Each participating child got a sketchbook at the beginning to record their impressions of the three-day workshop. The rubber boot tours led into the water and mud and into the dark and mysterious tunnel. Animals, plants and special events were drawn. Paintings with mud and the “All Children’s Island” were created. A year later the island was used  for Frauke Köbberling’s art installation and has already survived several floods.
Photo documentation: Constanze Flamme

Red Robinia and Yellow God’s Tree
Workshop with Inci Güler (Museumspädagogin)

What grows how and where and why? – We walked through the narrow forest belt that surrounds the rainwater basin. We collected leaves and grasses and tried to identify them with the help of an app. We draw what we liked, or printed with parts of the plants, or carved print designs in linoleum plates. The result is a colorful book you can find in website’s repository: the Floating Leaves, Trees, Grasses book, Edition Autumn.
Photo documentation: Constanze Flamme

The Creepy and the Beautiful – Living in the mud
Workshop with Ursula Rogg (Künstlerin und Pädagogin)

Wading, fishing, collecting – what’s living in the mud? That was our starting situation and question. With the help of a microscope and a magnifying camera, we looked closely and tried to enlarge our discoverings into our own creations . The result was a huge net with space for different findings. Regarding the plans to change the water basin into a meadow we took the opportunity to share our best experiences in floating. What is only possible here and why is the place special for us.
Dokumentation von Ursula Rogg / Documentation of Ursula Rogg
Fotodokumentation von Constanze Flamme