Profile + Values

What is important to us – HKB guidelines

The HKB stands for social and artistic diversity. As a place of education, training and work, it offers a wide range of disciplines that are taught and learned, the opportunity for diverse cultures to meet, as well as a place where a diversity of people work, study, teach and research. We cultivate an openness towards new ideas and a respectful manner in how we interact. The HKB is a place of artistic practice, where creative drive finds contemporary expression with a view to the future.

At the HKB the students are at the center. We shape and develop the university in exchange with them. With our individualised teaching programmes, we cater to students who are committed as they are inspired, as critical as they are reflective, and as eager to experiment as they are interdisciplinary. Independent and networked activities in research, further education and service complement our offerings. Entrepreneurial thinking and action are important to us. We actively promote diversity within our university and value the manifold potentials that arise from it. 

The HKB has its finger on the pulse. It is an institution which raises questions and develops current artistic discourses and social debates. We support diverse attitudes and are committed to the freedom of art and science. As part of a multidisciplinary university of applied sciences, we contribute our knowledge to cross-disciplinary collaborations that help find solutions to societal challenges. 

We are regionally, nationally and internationally visible and connect the German- and French- speaking cultural areas. As an important cultural organizer, the HKB is in dialogue with the public and is committed to a plural society. 

Setting the course

The HKB accepts the challenges of the future. A vision, six development goals and associated implementation measures outline the coordinate system in which our university intends to develop over the next five years.
 
The development of the university in 2025 must be understood as a dynamic and open process, because in the face of an ever-accelerating world we must continue to be able to absorb external impulses and adapt our teaching and research content and structures for the benefit of our students. Thus, the development goals take on the role of centres of gravity in terms of content in order to initiate processes of change at their core. This is done with the intention of being able to offer the students of the HKB a contemporary design or artistic education under constantly changing conditions.

Code of Conduct

The HKB brings together people with different identities and of various backgrounds. While this diversity is enriching, it also harbours the potential for conflict when dealing with one another. This guideline is intended to support both staff and students in avoiding, recognizing and naming intolerable behaviour and actively taking action against it.

The HKB Advisory Board is a permanent body and supports the Director in an advisory capacity. It advises and supports the Director on strategic, cultural and higher education policy issues, provides impetus for teaching, research, further education and services from an external perspective. Furthermore, it promotes public awareness of matters relating to the HKB and supports the HKB in representing its interests to third parties. The Advisory Board is self-constituting and works on an honorary basis.

The HKB Advisory Board will be reconstituted in 2024.

do.hkb is the voice of the lecturers and represents them in the management bodies of the academy. It is the point of contact for all lecturers and represents their interests in the relevant division management (FBL) and in the school management (DL).

The board of the association is made up of the 5 department representatives.

do.hkb in Brief

• Since 2004, do.hkb has been organised as an association and thus outside the HKB organisational chart.
• The association is an independent interface to external interest groups and trade unions.
• A department representative represents one department at a time.
• The board members of do.hkb are lecturers and have a seat in the respective departmental management meetings; they send a representative to the departmental management meeting.
• The association seeks cooperation with the lecturers' organisation of the Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH / ProFHesBE.

The Association for Mid-level Academic Staff, Administration and Services of the Bern University of the Arts (VMAD-HKB) represents the interests of the mid-level academic, administrative and services staff at the HKB. The most important goal is to ensure that the interests and perspectives of all members are heard by the university's governing bodies.

The VMAD-HKB establishes contacts within BFH, is involved in higher education policy and advocates for the concerns of staff. The VMAD-HKB is open to all mid-level academic, administrative and services staff at the HKB.

All mid-level academic, administrative and services staff at the HKB are automatically members of the association when they take up their position. All further information for employees can be found at mybfh.ch.
 

Kulturesk is the student organisation of the HKB. It unites the over 1000 HKB students from all departments: Music, Theatre, Literary Writing, Design and Art, Restoration-Conservation, Research and CAP (Y).

Kulturesk offers students a platform for performances, concerts, readings, exhibitions and much more, supporting interdisciplinary initiatives in particular with a financial contribution each semester.

The aim is – in addition to an active university policy – to promote contact among students and in doing so specifically student, artistic and cultural creation and life at the HKB.

All persons – with or without disabilities – shall enjoy full access to all cultural activities. This has been the aim of the «Kultur inklusiv» label. Launched in the Swiss canton of Berne in 2015, the purpose of the pilot project was to promote and implement cultural participation for all, and to support cultural institutions on their journey to wholly inclusive accessibility.

By 2016, fourteen different Bernese cultural institutions, large and small, had joined the project. Currently, the activities of its Service Centre (Fachstelle) extend across all of Switzerland; the label has been awarded to some 75 cultural institutions.

HKB was the first Swiss university of the arts to embark on providing fully accessible courses and activities. Also, HKB recently ratified both the project’s Charter on Cultural Inclusion (Charta zur kulturellen Inklusion) and its Action Plan for 2020–2023.