Jugendkunstschule ATRIUM

The Atrium Youth Art School in Märkisches Viertel is Germany's largest youth art school and the place on this list where children don't just watch, but play theatre themselves. The program includes theatre courses for children aged six and up, dance workshops, and class projects. Additionally, there's an art park with an outdoor stage and a large costume collection.

Atrium Youth Art School in Märkisches Viertel: Art Park with its Own Outdoor Stage

The Atrium Youth Art School is located on Senftenberger Ring in Märkisches Viertel, in a 1960s building that was originally built as a primary school and has housed the art school since 1987. By 2023, the building underwent energetic renovation for around 3.5 million Euros, with the facade, roof, and windows renewed. Bus line 120 stops at a bus stop named after the building; lines 124, M21, X21, and X33 go to Märkisches Zentrum, and from Wittenau, you can reach it with S1, S85, and U8.

Since 2016, a dedicated art park with stone terraces, tree benches, and a large outdoor stage, used for performances in the summer, has surrounded the building. Sculptures created in the school’s courses are on display there. The literature café with a terrace features another small stage. From there, one looks directly into the sculpture park, and parents can wait there while their children rehearse.

Theatre Courses, Dance Workshops, and Costume Collection at the Atrium Youth Art School

Unlike the other venues on this list, the Atrium Youth Art School is not a stage with a fixed schedule, but a place where children themselves perform theatre. It is Germany’s largest youth art school, supported by the Reinickendorf district office, and currently offers around 157 programs in the fields of art, theatre, spoken word, and dance.

In the theatre section, there is a course for six-to-eight-year-olds, a children’s theatre course for nine-to-twelve-year-olds, and the theatre group DramArt for teenagers and young adults, along with dance workshops, hip-hop courses, and acrobatics. School classes book theatre projects as class projects. A material fee of 90 Euros for a full school year applies to an afternoon course; a children’s birthday party with a workshop costs 150 Euros including materials. A special feature is the costume collection, which has gathered over 6,000 costumes since 1986 and lends them out to schools, daycares, and youth theatre groups throughout Berlin. Twice a year, the school also hosts its own workshop festivals where children and young people publicly showcase their work.