Wed, 31 May 2006

Positive media response to Swiss “Steiner Week 06”

DORNACH (NNA) - Last month, the Swiss Waldorf schools, Demeter and the Demeter consumer organisations, and three anthroposophical clinics in Switzerland launched a coordinated publicity campaign “Steiner Week 06” on occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the first Steiner school in Basle 80 years ago. How did the media respond? Ursa Krattiger reports.

The response generated by the first “Steiner Week 06“ among the Swiss media was impressive in scope and content – and, apart from one negative reference, largely positive.

Swiss television and radio carried features on specific aspects of anthroposophical activities in Switzerland – Swiss television on anthroposophical medicine, setting its report in the context of the wider events of „Steiner Week 06, and in its Basle regional service Swiss radio carried a five minute feature on a rally in Basle city centre.

However, given that the campaign was pegged to the anniversary of the founding of the first Steiner school in Basle, much of the media attention concentrated on Waldorf education, with a tendency to ignore other aspects of anthroposophy in action. There were frequent references to an anniversary publication, “Lebenstüchtig – was Ehemalige von Rudolf Steiner Schulen heute machen” (Fit for life: what former Rudolf Steiner school students are doing today) which contained portraits of 41 former pupils and what they were doing now in all spheres of life.

One interesting factor in the campaign was the geographical differences in coverage. Whereas it was more restrained in centres with a major anthroposophical presence such as Basle and Zurich, it grew in intensity in the more “peripheral” areas where anthroposophical facilities are less well established and perhaps more of a novelty. That having been said, Basle and its surroundings as the centre of anthroposophical activities in Switzerland – with the Goetheanum in Dornach, two of the three clinics in Arlesheim and seven of the 36 Swiss Steiner schools in and around the city – forms something of an exception with reports on anthroposophical activities being standard fare for the local media.

The comparative lack of coverage of “Steiner Week 06“ in Zurich was compensated for by the impressive reviews of the documentary film “And in conclusion, Mozart” by Christian Labhart which had its premier in Zurich during “Steiner Week 06”. In a plot similar to the film “Rhythm is it”, the film documents the choir rehearsals of the Wetzikon Rudolf Steiner school, using this backdrop to present portraits of three class 12 students.

At the anthroposophical periphery – in the Bündnerland, the canton of St.Gallen and in Liechtenstein, in French-speaking Switzerland and in Ticino, as well as in Aargau and Bernbiet, there was intensive reporting both about the campaign as a whole and on individual events. Perhaps anthroposophy is still something rather “unusual” here and arouses greater interest.

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Ursa Krattiger is head of the Swiss Anthroposophical Media Centre (MAS)

ENDS

Item: 060503-02EN Date: 31 May 2006

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