Mini-Munich: a short introduction to the project
Mini-Munich is a play city for children aged 9 to 15 and the largest summer cultural program for Children in Munich. Within a carefully designed urban setting and governed by a few simple rules, the play city is brought to life by thousands of children. They work, trade, consume, study, and create their own culture and politics. Adult experts from a wide range of fields also take part in the game. It is up to the children how they choose to participate, what they decide to do, and how long they stay. Entry to Mini-Munich is free and requires no preregistration.
Mini-Munich is a temporary model city. The institutions, facilities, and processes of urban life are represented and enacted on a smaller scale, giving rise to a highly complex game with thousands of participants. How does life in a city develop? How do its institutions interact? How are politics and the cycles of work, money, and consumption organized? The play city reflects aspects of real urban life, realized in a way that makes them accessible to children: the structural elements and spatial arrangements of a city, its inhabitants, and their everyday roles. Yet Mini-Munich is far more than a mere imitation. Through their many actions, movements, and decisions, the children co-create their own temporary urban reality.
By adopting and interpreting roles within this microcosm, they generate a dynamic network of interactions. Children become mayors, gardeners, taxi drivers, journalists, and professors. They empty bins and sweep the streets, hold elections, markets, and parties, write a daily newspaper, and run TV and radio stations. As they bring their city to life, they engage with social, economic, political, and organizational challenges.
In recent years, the children’s activities have been expanded beyond the summer holidays. They now accompany and advise the organizers during visits to potential sites for the play city and work continuously and independently in the Mini-Munich town planning office in the months leading up to the main program.
The play city Mini-Munich is an event organized by Kultur & Spielraum e.V., a registered non-profit association in Germany.
About us
Kultur & Spielraum e.V. develops and implements projects in cultural, artistic, and political education at various locations throughout the city. In addition, the association permanently runs two children’s and youth cultural workshops as part of community cultural centers: one at the Seidlvilla in Schwabing and one at the Pasinger Fabrik.
A defining feature of the work of Kultur & Spielraum e.V. is its extensive network of cooperation partners from the fields of art, politics, public administration, crafts, and academia. All projects share a common focus on children and young people. They create spaces for active, playful, and creative participation, as well as for self-organization and learning.
The selection of topics and guiding questions is based on criteria of social relevance for children and young people. They are invited to engage with a wide range of issues and living realities.
Kultur & Spielraum e.V. was founded in 1989 and sees itself as one of the successor organizations of the former Pädagogische Aktion (1975–1989) as well as of the art education collective KEKS (1969–1973), which gained public attention through public actions and artistic interventions with children and young people.
