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9.0 Intro

Working together, adolescents and authors from Switzerland wrote texts and then read them aloud in a series of events across the country: the pilot phase of the literature mediation project is over. For those who are responsible for the project, a new phase is beginning, one focused on making people understand the cultural mediation project.

The various groups involved in the project harbour different expectations concerning its documentation: the young participants might like to see their texts published, and receive an album of photographs to remind them of an intense time. The funding source(s) needs a project evaluation written in the style they are accustomed to and applying their criteria, plus an overview of press reports. The institutions which hosted the readings want pictures and short texts which will work well on their websites. The authors might initially express indifference as to how the project is presented, but complain afterwards that their contributions were not adequately acknowledged. Last but not least, the project’s designers need documentation demonstrating the success of their approaches to help establish them in their professional field. If, despite the tight budget, they do manage to produce some form of documentation, the variety of differing expectations and needs will result in contradictory presentations of the same project (see the project “Schulhausroman” in Case Study 1).

The texts in this section examine certain important aspects of the documentation of cultural mediation and discuss some of the problems associated with it.

The first section ends with a brief discussion of how cultural mediation is depicted in this publication. The “For Reading at Leisure” text explores the advantages associated with a reflective approach to the challenges posed by the processes of presenting cultural mediation.