An art project with and for children with disabilities
44 Flavours (Julio Rölle & Sebastian Bagge)and the 37 children of die wiege
Under the artistic direction of the artist duo 44flavours (Julio Rölle and Sebastian Bagge), the 37 residents of Die Wiege and over 80 staff members created an artwork spanning more than 200 square meters on the exterior walls of the children’s home founded in 1966.
The art project took place at both locations of the children’s home, on Birkenstraße and Burgfeldstraße in Odelzhausen, situated between Munich and Augsburg. The result of this participatory project are facade artworks covering a total area of over 200 m² on the external walls of the home. The main location, featuring three painted facades, is prominently located at the entrance of Odelzhausen in the Dachau district. At the Burgfeldstraße site, an additional wall was designed.
The artist duo Julio Rölle & Sebastian Bagge, who have been working together under the name 44flavours since 2003, succeeded in including the 37 children and young people with disabilities from Die Wiege in all phases of the artistic process in an empathetic, patient, and loving way.
The artists’ visual language was prepared for the residents as a collage-based game using laser-cut forms in a wide range of materials, making it varied and accessible on an individual level. Three-dimensional shapes such as trees, vases, stars, circles, stairs, and other objects were created in the distinctive style of the duo, using materials like mirrored plexiglass, foam, wood, felt, and film. These were tailored to the residents’ diverse and sensitive perceptual abilities. The children could experience the color and form language of the artists in a multisensory way—seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling the different materials. This playful approach helped to overcome communication barriers and enabled a holistic sensory experience of visual art.
The arrangement of the play elements on templates depicting outlines of the Die Wiege houses was interpreted and creatively composed by residents and staff into collages, window images, hanging mobiles, and other media. Elements from these playful activities were then integrated into the final facade artworks, creating a direct link between the play experiences in the residential groups and the artworks on the buildings.
Many of the residents showed great interest in contributing to the painting process on the facades. Others found calm in observing or experienced collective moments of flow while painting, sketching, or writing on their own.
The open research-based project design was guided by the key question of how participation in artistic processes can succeed for individuals with varying levels of support needs. It allowed for spontaneity and flexibility, enabling the artists to respond intuitively to the atmosphere and environment. Interactions that arose naturally between residents, staff, and artists during the residency influenced the final artwork. Not only did the residents gain new experiences and learn from the artists, but the artists also emphasized how much they learned and were enriched by their interactions with the residents and educators. The open-ended concept gave everyone the freedom to engage at any time, to respond intuitively, and to allow the work to evolve dynamically and organically.
Julio Rölle and Sebastian Bagge were deeply impressed by the openness and enthusiasm of the residents, as well as the dedication, effort, and trust of the staff in facilitating and supporting these encounters. The positive feedback from Die Wiege further motivated the two artists.
Thanks to Julio & Sebastian, new creative spaces were opened within the semi-public setting of Die Wiege—spaces that spark imagination and encourage a mutual shift in perspective.
With exemplary impact, the two artists inspired both residents and staff through their personalities and working methods. Since then, a large mural wall has been installed in the garden of the children’s home, inviting the children and young people to create large-scale artworks in their own unique styles.
Over the past months, in several open project phases, Julio Rölle and Sebastian Bagge—together with the residents, staff, and therapists—explored how participation can be achieved for the 37 residents with disabilities and diverse support needs. This collaboration between the therapeutic children’s home and the artist duo has resulted in a creative program for the five family-style residential groups. The multisensory nature of the project allowed the children and young people to contribute their own artistic input to the collective artwork in a playful way. The contributions from the five residential groups, the housekeeping & maintenance team, the administrative staff & support services were presented to the artists in the form of multimedia collages and integrated under their artistic direction into a unified artwork.
Through participating in the creative process, the residents and staff were able to express themselves and make a personal contribution to the collective piece. The 37 residents could observe the artists as they painted the facades and were also offered further creative activities in the garden, encouraging them to imitate and perhaps find lasting inspiration.
The project began in April with an initial meeting with the artists. The facade artwork was realized between June 14 and June 23, 2022, as part of an artist residency.
ABOUT 44FLAVOURS
The artist duo 44flavours Sebastian Bagge and Julio Rölle have been working together since 2003. Their artistic activities include painting, ceramics, sculptures, prints and objects. The painted object can be a piece of cardboard, stone, wood, a vase from a flea market or any wall standing somewhere in the world. 44flavours' creative energy flows into their immediate surroundings just as naturally as the classical canvas and reveals their quest to explore the world and its surroundings.
44flavours’ art is unadulterated, direct and intuitive: they use strong colors to create a pop art painting mix of spatial innuendo, Op art, figuration and symbols.
The juxtaposition of styles, perspectives and illusions, leads to a contemplation with erratic discoveries.
This mix is the result of the work process, which can be viewed as an action-reaction between the two actors. Each step is a response to the previous action of the other.
In a seemingly perpetual creative development, the duo spontaneously uses and processes randomly available materials. While the painting on canvas plays with different perspectives and illusions of space, the objects and sculptures function like an appropriation of space.
Discover and assign: It is the diversity of artistic manifestations (in public space, in painting, in sculptural work) that introduces us to 44flavours’ philosophy to life. Every discovered action on every day and every place in the world poses anew the question of where and how, of personal and social identity and anchoring in this world.
Die Wiege is a therapeutic children’s home based in Odelzhausen.A team of over 80 staff members provides a home for 37 children, adolescents, and young adults with intellectual, physical, and multiple disabilities—from infancy to the end of their school years—across five family-oriented residential groups in four housing units.
The aim of Die Wiege is to offer individualized, needs-based, and holistic support, education, care, and nurturing of the children and young people, based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and a comprehensive child protection policy.
Die Wiege was founded in 1966 and is privately run by the grandson of the founder.