Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle

The art school in Halle offers artistically talented young people a wide range of artistic and theoretical teaching as well as a place where they can experiment with their skills and develop them to a professional level in an environment of intellectual exchange and practical cooperation with university teaching staff and fellow students. The university was founded in 1915 and now has over one thousand enrolled students from all over the world. Students in the Design courses graduate with bachelor’s or master’s degrees, students in Art courses graduate with ‘Diplom’ degrees, while those in teaching courses complete their first state exam.

Visionary thinking and design beyond any considerations of commercial exploitation are nurtured alongside the development of practical career skills. As befits both art and design, students are given a significant degree of freedom and are encouraged to follow their own individual paths. With their ideas and works and their visions and positions, students should be able to contribute to societal discourse as articulate, involved, critical and independent individuals. The framework for achieving this is provided by a broadly based training in the fundamentals of both theory and practice, by well-equipped laboratories and workshops, by research and other projects – which may also be involve cooperation with institutions and companies – and by interdisciplinary links and dialogue.

The university fulfils its research responsibilities in artistic disciplines by allowing teaching artists to develop their own work and to pass on the knowledge they gain in the course of conceptual and production processes. Design principles are investigated with regard to systems, processes and products in the design disciplines. Issues of mobility, living and working, of communication and intercultural exchange, and of life-long learning are interlinked here with questions regarding the future viability of various lifestyles.

Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle participates in various international networks. It has numerous contacts in western Europe and also to universities in central and eastern Europe. As part of the ERASMUS programme, Burg Giebichenstein has cooperation agreements with 50 partner universities and schools in 20 countries in Europe – including art schools in Austria and Switzerland and in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.

Since early 2005, Burg Giebichenstein has been a partner in the Cumulus International Association of European universities and colleges of art, design and media. There are 165 institutions in the Cumulus network. The aim of the schools and universities involved is to create a dynamic and flexible academic forum that links the leading international educational institutes with one another. The focus is on international projects, on making it easier to transfer between universities, and on student exchanges.

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International cooperations

Burg Giebichenstein also cooperates directly with a large number of art schools outside of Europe – for example, in Canada, Japan, USA, China, India, Vietnam and Cuba.