The joint project "Cultural Education and its Networks"(KuBiNetze) deals with cultural experiences, social relationships and networks in rural areas.

In cooperation with the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, the project aims to find out why and how cultural offerings function particularly well or less well in rural areas. The study is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of a larger funding initiative. The project started in 2019 and will end in June 2023. The project is led by Prof. Dr. Andreas C. Lehmann, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rauh and Dr. Johannes Hasselhorn.

The aim of the research is to strengthen cultural development in rural areas. Possible success factors of the cultural offerings of the four study communities in southern and northern Germany are to be communicated to the outside world so that other communities can benefit from them.

In the summer, a research delegation visited a study community in Ostallgäu and received a warm welcome. In addition to exciting interviews and informal discussions about challenges, problems with young people, organization and networking of the individual associations, we were allowed to see for ourselves individual cultural offerings. This included spontaneously standing in for an actor who had fallen ill at the theater association or sitting together after rehearsals of the music band and the folk music group. In the coming months, further field visits to a community on the Czech border are scheduled.

First impressions of the project have already been written up in an anthology:

Arndt, J., Graßl, M., Hasselhorn, J., Lehmann, A. C. & Rauh, J. (2021). Kulturelle Bildung und ihre sozialen Netzwerke in ländlichen Räumen in Nord- und Süddeutschland. In N. Kolleck, M. Büdel & J. Nolting (Eds.), Forschung zu Kultureller Bildung in ländlichen Räumen (pp. 41-54). Weinheim: Beltz