Sensible: Our Perception
The Educational Project for the “Brains” Exhibition, sponsored by the Non-Profit Hertie-Foundation
In fall of 2025, the project “Sinnvoll: Unsere Wahrnehmung” (Sensible: Our Perception) launched. It accompanies the new permanent exhibition “Brains” and is specifically aimed at intensive classes starting in fifth grade, as well as at secondary and comprehensive schools in grades six through ten. In the interactive workshops and guided tours, students experience how our senses work – and what happens in our brains when we perceive the world. Discovering, experimenting, and getting creative – interested school classes can register for these programs starting now. Thanks to the generous support of the non-profit Hertie-Foundation, these programs are free of charge for school classes.
Guided Tours for Intensive Classes
When language barriers exist, we often use multiple senses at once to communicate: smell, taste, touch – all of these can help us understand. During the tour, these and other senses are not only engaged. They also become the focus of the tour itself: How do the senses actually work? And do animals perhaps see or hear differently than we do? Students approach one of nature’s most complex structures – the brain – in an accessible way. A special feature of the tour is its interactivity. We don’t just talk about the senses and learn German terminology related to the brain and sensory perception – we also explore our own sensory abilities through small experiments. Images, animations, and hands-on activities further support sensory and holistic learning.
Workshops for Middle and Comprehensive Schools
Understanding your own brain isn’t all that easy. To ensure that students are still eager to explore this complex organ, the workshop’s motto is quite literally: Hands-On Learning! Through tinkering and making, students approach the topic via a creative design process. This method fosters communication within the group and uses creativity and craftsmanship to think through and visualize abstract neural processes. The process is prepared through group work in the “Brains” exhibition. By having each group focus on a specific sense, students learn the basics of the neurological stimulation and processing of human sensory functions. Through various experiments, theory becomes tangible, and any existing school knowledge is reinforced.
A written guide for teachers is also planned for late 2026, which will help them apply the methods tested in the project to their classrooms.
With the program “Sinnvoll: Unsere Wahrnehmung” (Sensible: Our Perception) for educationally disadvantaged students, the Hertie Foundation is continuing its commitment to the permanent exhibition “Gehirne” (Brains) at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, which it helped design and supports. This support is part of the Foundation’s efforts to educate people about the brain, how it works, and brain disorders. Further information about the Foundation’s activities in the “Brain Research” program area can be found here.
