The project “Colorful, Small, Everywhere – Is It All Just Trash?” took place from August 1–4, 2025, as part of the group exhibition “Collapse is not a destination, it is a process”, which was on view from June 13 to September 21, 2025, at the Old Town Hall in Göttingen. The works of 13 international artists addressed climate change, consumerism, and global interconnections. The project was based on the UNESCO BNE 2030 program and made environmental awareness and questions about the future tangible in a playful way.

The participants were children aged seven to thirteen from the Grone Neighborhood Center. They were supported by Paula Sander, head of the art education program; art educator Marit-Helen Brunnert; and Anna Eisenträger, an educator for sustainable development; as well as Sabine Koch and Martina Köllner from the Neighborhood Center team.

To start, the children explored the exhibition through associative exercises and came up with questions for the artists. They were particularly impressed by a sculpture by artist Robert Gschwantner, which, consisting of oil-filled IV tubes, contrasted natural aesthetics with human dependence on plastic and environmental destruction. The diverse approaches and materials used by the exhibiting artists stimulated all of the children’s senses.

The result was a collaborative multimedia collage of a utopia created in the exhibition space, serving as a creative vision of the future and a beacon of hope.

In the days that followed, the children collected plastic scraps from their surroundings in the “Müllbarium,” examined their origins,

and explored them artistically. Through printing, figure-making, and storytelling, the trash itself became the starting point for creative ideas. From this, the children developed stop-motion films in which their recycled figures told their own stories.

The final stop motion videos were presented at the Neighbourhood Center Grone and were celebrated by the staff and other children.