“Start acting!”

Out & About: From 2014 to 2020, you held the post of director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. Now you are the director of the School of Art and Design FHNW in Basel: You have repeatedly taken on leadership roles. What appeals to you about that?

Claudia Perren: It’s a broad area of responsibility – and that excites me. I taught for a long time and gained a lot of experience in the process. Then I started coordinating the first bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. Leading a foundation was a big and exciting step, and leading a college of design and art now is a wonderfully challenging task. In my experience, it is important to always trust yourself to take the next step. These don’t have to be linear developments, but should be shaped by one’s own interests and opportunities that open up.

How do you balance family and career? Do you have any tips for young people who potentially want both?

My advice is: Make it work! We have lived as a family in Berlin, Sydney, Dessau and Basel over the last 20 years and have always found ways together to combine jobs, schools, interests and free time. We are a well-coordinated team, but we have also always adapted to very different conditions in each place. In Switzerland, the relatively expensive childcare is often cited as an argument for why women can’t work. It is certainly worthwhile to create an offer here that is available on an equal footing with school education. Of interest to me: In Sydney, preschool childcare is as expensive as in Switzerland, and yet most women go to work.

I encourage people to take an active role and work to change things politically and socially if they seem essential. This is what I understand by co-creation and leads to moving from passive complaining to active action: Start acting!

Far-reaching structural changes are taking place at the HGK (Academy for Art and Design in Basel). Is the institution in crisis?

For me, a crisis is the Corona pandemic or the war in Ukraine. The development of a university, on the other hand, is its very own task. We restructured because the structures had grown out of control over many years and certain current topics were not clearly addressed strategically. However, these are developments that will continue to happen in the future, i.e. sometimes they are major and sometimes minor changes – a university must always remain dynamic.

Since February, we at the HGK have been very concerned about how we can offer help to students from Ukraine. We are in direct contact with local art schools, but we are also well connected among the art schools in Switzerland and try to make it possible for as many students as possible to continue their studies safely. Thanks to the immediate commitment of the Laurenz Foundation, we are able to support students from Ukraine with scholarships, and thanks to the offers of solidarity from many staff members, students and the neighborhood, everyone was able to be well accommodated in a very short time. In a crisis like this, it’s all about close cooperation and the willingness to provide concrete help immediately.

What have you achieved over the past year?

We have achieved a lot at the HGK. First of all, we managed a pandemic together, which was a great challenge. Our lived cohesion was a very important component in this! But I’m also glad that we worked on our content and structures at the same time, that put our focus not only on the uncertainty in the pandemic. We have established five new institutes, all of which fulfill the so-called fourfold performance mandate, i.e. they offer bachelor’s and master’s programs, are active in research, and are increasingly developing continuing education programs as well. In terms of content, we have agreed on a few larger overarching themes: Digitality, Materiality, Diversity, Sustainability, and Social Transformations. This is reflected, for example, in the new Bachelor’s program in Visual Communication and Digital Spaces, in the continuing education programs Circular Design, Decolonizing Digital Archives, and Inclusive Storytelling, in the Bachelor’s workshops on CoCreative-Coding, and in research projects such as Plants Intelligence and Critical Listening to the Global South.

In addition, we have entered into many new collaborations and strengthened existing ones, such as with the Architekturwoche Basel in our new CIVIC Space, with the Hochschule für Musik FHNW in the Open Creation Master, our PhD-program with the University of Art in Linz, or the research project “Almer – Augmented Reality Brille” funded by Innosuisse.

Is there a difference between the leadership styles of men and women that you have experienced or had to deal with yourself?

Basically, I think we should leave the binary division of women and men in positions of responsibility and instead come to a self-understanding in which diversity is fundamentally seen as an advantage. After all, the ability to lead an institution, a course of study or a research project cannot be defined exclusively in terms of gender allocation, but is formed from sources of knowledge, professional expertise, cultural experiences, social forms, personal interests and much more.

“I encourage stepping into an active role and working to change things politically and socially when they seem essential.”

There are people who say that typical female characteristics are not compatible with the classic role model of a manager. Do you have the impression that women in management positions are considered either bitchy or weak?

What are supposed to be typical female characteristics?

How do you experience the situation of women in Academia? 

The academic community in Switzerland is diverse and I like it very much.

At the HGK, I had the opportunity to appoint three professors and three visiting professors in just under two years. Diversity played a major role in this, as I just mentioned. We have appointed four women and two men who bring diverse topics and discourses in art and design to the HGK, from queer-feminist technoscience, maker culture and fiction-based design methods to immersive scenography and the coexistence of interdisciplinary currents in art.

What steps can the HGK organization take to specifically support women*s careers?

Following a survey of employees at the HGK, we have decided to give increased attention to the topic of “promoting employees”. First of all, we will launch an information campaign on funding opportunities and make them easily accessible. This includes, for example, support programs for PhDs, international staff exchanges and a wide range of continuing education programs, where we already support many women. Team support will also play an important role in strengthening knowledge and exchange.

How does your leadership style differ from that of a man?

That depends on the man.

Would you earn more if you were a man?

No. In the institutions where I have worked so far, I always said at the beginning that I assumed that I earned the same as a woman, which was always confirmed to me.

What do you think women in management positions need to keep in mind?

Don’t let yourself be pushed into a role. It’s about finding your own role.

Many thanks to Prof. Dr. Claudia Perren for the interview and the inspiring advices!

Interview by Ina Bandixen