Deadline: 7-May-23
The Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future is inviting applications that focuses on the four funding priorities of the Education Agenda NS-Injustice – “Education in cultural spaces,” “Education in digital learning spaces,” “Transfer” and “Europe”.
The Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) launched the Education Agenda NS-Injustice on the initiative and with funding from the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF). Subject to the resolution of the German Bundestag as the budgetary legislator, the Agenda will be continued in 2024. From 2024 onwards, the EVZ Foundation will use this basis to fund further projects lasting up to 24 months.
The Education Agenda NS-Injustice Injustice is an expression of the political and moral responsibility of the Federal Republic of Germany for people persecuted under National Socialism and their legacy: Within a society of predominantly subsequent generations, this Education Agenda introduces the special prospects of victims of persecution concerning the history of National Socialism and its reappraisal post-1945 into the German and European culture of remembrance in a lasting way.
The funding program also raises awareness among people for antisemitism, antigypsyism, racism and other forms of group-focused enmity in the present. In addition to imparting historical knowledge about National Socialist injustice and keeping the memory of it alive, the Education Agenda empowers people to face these challenges in a courageous and competent manner in their living and working environments
Funding Objectives
The funded projects fulfill the following objectives in an outstanding manner, respectively, they:
- impart biographical experiences: concrete experiences of persecution under National Socialism and/ or experiences of the persecuted coming to terms with the crimes committed by the National Socialists after 1945, if possible, including testimonies of the survivors or their descendants (or by the active participation of descendants);
- strengthen competencies: perceive historical continuities of misanthropic tendencies and actions and current forms of discrimination, impart skills so that people actively confront these in their living and working environments;
- seek out new target groups: reach people who have had little or no interest in National Socialist injustice so far by addressing them specifically or by providing for public campaigns or other surprising and affecting interventions in public or digital spaces;
- work in an interdisciplinary way: facilitate interdisciplinary approaches systematically and initiate new and innovative cooperation alliances for this purpose.
Topics and Approaches in particular Focus of the Call for Applications
- Conveying the experiences of persecution and discrimination of hitherto little acknowledged or stigmatized persecuted groups, such as so-called “asocials”, “professional criminals”, deserters from the Wehrmacht, but also LGBTIQ persons or Sinti and Roma;
- Skill and empathy-based learning from National Socialist history and discrimination-sensitive judgment in the present;
- Establishing of sustainable cooperation between educational institutions, civil society organizations and/or cultural and digital stakeholders with selforganizations of persecuted persons or their descendants;
- Processes of reappraisal and recognition (“Reparation”) by the Federal Republic of Germany with special consideration of the experiences of those persecuted;
- Content or communicative references to the 80th anniversary of the liberation in 2025.
Funding Priorities
- Cultural Spaces
- Projects within the funding priority “Education in cultural spaces” achieve their educational goals using artistic approaches (performing arts and visual arts). These projects affect people emotionally, create empathy, and connect with the living environments of young people in particular.
- Objectives:
- The projects aim to develop innovative artistic approaches to the remembrance of the persecuted and victims of National Socialist injustice.
- The projects implement immersive art- and culturerelated educational activities with didactic support in a collaborative and participatory manner with target groups who are educationally disadvantaged.
- They appeal to (young) people even outside of metropolitan cultural institutions.
- They strengthen empathetic, socially responsible attitudes and teach skills for historically aware engagement against antisemitism, antigypsyism, racism as well as LGBTIQ and able-bodied hostility.
- Funding criteria:
- New formats of interaction will emerge between cultural institutions, traditional educational entities (NGOs, academies, memorial sites), schools and other civil society stakeholders, especially in the field of music (musical theater, dance, musicals, rap, theater, dance festivals, etc.) theater and street art.
- Professional artists (musicians, orchestras and dancers, dramatists, street artists, etc.) will work with young people who have little exposure to art and history in their lives.
- Young people are actively involved and are not merely considered recipients.
- The projects will develop an effective communication strategy focused on digital communication channels and will work with national media.
- The projects are interdisciplinary in the sense of combining artistic experience and digital formats or extensions of cultural and public spaces as well as interdisciplinary approaches.
- Education in Digital Learning Spaces
- Projects within the funding priority “Education in digital spaces” achieve their educational goals using multimedia, interactive, and participatory formats. The Foundation funds projects that incorporate the effects of digital transformation on historical and political education about National Socialist injustice and develop new practices of remembrance as examples of a Culture of Remembrance 4.0.
- Objectives:
- The projects aim to develop innovative digital content and forms of education, remembrance and commemoration of National Socialist injustice and to apply them.
- The projects strengthen a culture of remembrance in digital spaces that is fact-based, historically aware, and critical.
- In the projects, new alliances emerge in co-creative processes, members of academia (contemporary history, digital memory studies, and citizen science), art, and digital technologies are working together to explore new resources and methods for education, remembrance, and commemoration of National Socialist injustice.
- Funding criteria:
- The project partners oversee the development and use of innovative digital educational formats and link analog and digital spaces of remembrance in order to leverage the potential of the culture of remembrance and create innovative educational approaches to the history of National Socialism.
- The project sponsors discuss the challenges of digital projects both on the content level between historical facts and fictionalized formats and on the technical level (conditions for success: technical complexity vs. maintenance, digital sovereignty of the user).
- A coherent public relations strategy that communicates with all relevant target groups, sends individual messages and generates interaction and feedback accompanies the project.
- Transfer
- Projects within the funding priority “Transfer” are aimed at skills-based learning in the working environment. Based on the occupational group-specific examination of National Socialist injustice, skills for dealing with current forms of group-focused enmity are developed and enhanced.
- Objectives:
- The projects develop, test and implement innovative training programs for occupational groups in key positions in society (e.g. police, justice, administration, media and education).
- The projects combine historical education with present-oriented modules that address discriminatory tendencies and actions in the relevant occupational groups (e.g., ableism, antisemitism, antigypsyism and other forms of discrimination) and offer options for action.
- The projects contribute to a nationwide or European network of providers of education for specific occupational groups and enable a (professional)
- Funding criteria:
- The project sponsors provide for the development of innovative digital educational formats or incorporate digital modules or supplementary services.
- The continuing education programs enable a sustainable transfer of knowledge and skills and have an impact beyond the duration of the project (e.g. through the training of disseminators). Ideally, possibilities for continuation are already considered during project development.
- Concepts and educational materials are developed in close cooperation with representatives of the target group.
- A suitable public relations strategy (including the implementation of high-profile project modules) supports the project.
- Europe
- The funding priority “Europe” reflects and records the European dimension of National Socialist injustice. Funded projects strengthen a present-oriented shared European space of remembrance – especially under the conditions of an increasingly fragmenting memory of World War II in European countries. The memory of National Socialist injustice can also be taken into account in the light of the current war in Ukraine. Transnational project alliances promote the idea of a shared European memory by dedicated historical-political educational work. Transnational cooperation partners empower people to stand up for democratic values, strengthen social cohesion and provide new impetus for the European memory discourse.
- Objectives:
- Transnational alliance projects (if possible three participating countries; one partner must be from Germany) are jointly committed to multi-perspective historical-political education and dialog work and foster a present-oriented historical consciousness in Europe.
- The projects result in forward-looking formats of historical-political education that work both locally and in the broader European context.
- The projects result in new cooperations between organizations or institutions from Israel and/or Southern, Central and Eastern Europe with Western European partners.
- Funding criteria:
- The project partners reflect in a fact-based way on different national historical narratives, their particularities as well as on current rupture points of European memory. They analyze contradictory narratives of different countries and identify similarities to strengthen a common European culture of remembrance.
- The transnational cooperation takes a multiperspective approach and provides for a fair and comptence-oriented distribution of tasks among the partner organizations on an equal footing. This is also reflected in the cost and financing plan.
- Educational formats, methods and discourse platforms are jointly developed in the projects. These are target group and action oriented and are tested in a participatory process.
Funding Information
- The amount applied for must be at least EUR 250,000. The contribution of third-party and own funds is welcome but is not a funding prerequisite.
- Duration: The maximum term may be up to 24 months, subject to specification in the federal budget.
Eligibility Criteria
- Projects that are developed and implemented by an applicant organization based in Germany. Participating partner organizations are also possible located outside Germany.
- All funded projects can participate in cross-program networking activities of the Foundation in the area of remembrance and share their experiences.
- New projects can benefit from the exchange of experience with projects that have already been completed or are in progress, both in the funding priority and in overarching network meetings.
For more information, visit Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ).