"The painting school" is a youth art school that has been located in the Cranach-Hof at Schlossstraße 1 in the historic town centre of Wittenberg since 1996. Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son Lucas Cranach the Younger maintained their large painting workshop in this courtyard. With the help of the federal government, the state and the city, the Cranach courtyards were extensively renovated. The Cranach Foundation, which grew out of a citizens' initiative, has enriched these places with cultural life from the very beginning.

The founding of a youth art school at Schlossstraße 1 continues the tradition of training and promoting young talent. Since then, it has been available to children, young people and adults as a contemporary cultural educational institution. Our teachers are primarily artists and art educators. In this way, we guarantee a high-quality and varied educational programme.

• We want to offer children and young people freedom, but not leave them alone in their search for their own artistic expression.
• We want to be a place of perception and imagination.
• We work without curricula and assessments.
• We want to promote artistic talent.
• We are tradition-conscious with a view to the future and connect the past with the here and now.
• We preserve cultural heritage and venture into the unfamiliar.
• We build bridges and thus send impulses outwards.
• We want to reach the individual and promote the community.
• Our work supports personal development and promotes social skills.
• We want to contribute to understanding between different cultures.
• We want to strengthen cultural education and make it accessible to all interested parties.