Kinderarbeitsagentur (Children’s Employment Agency)

In the summer of 2022, the Children’s Employment Agency will open at Torstraße 15 (Phase 1). We place, accompany and professionalise the employees — the participating children — of the agency. We offer mediation services between potential clients and our experts. The experts are children between the ages of seven and twelve who work on, prepare, carry out and document the work assignments.

In a second step, we develop questions regarding the concept of work as a type of service and the construct of a capitalist society based on the children’s insights and experiences in the work assignments.

In phase 2, the office becomes a counselling centre for work, the children’s employment agency. Working adults arrange counselling sessions and question their everyday working life and their attitude towards work together with the experts.

The project seeks to shake up basic assumptions about children, their abilities and places of action in the city of Stuttgart. The agency is a place where negotiation processes, participation and critical practice are practised and realised. Here, social orders and structural hierarchies are experienced, questioned and, in the best case scenario, lead to a process of re-articulation.

More information and dates for counselling sessions at www.kinderarbeitsagentur.de

With: Carlotta, Isabell, Josefine, Lisa, Mats, Michael and Valentin

The project is funded as part of the project “Weiterkommen!” of the Centre for Cultural Participation Baden-Württemberg and is part of the Festival of the KulturRegion Stuttgart.