LANDSICHTEN

There is not only one rural area, but many of different of them. They vary in terms of resources or social, structural and political challenges. Germany’s places beyond the urban centres are diverse and facing multiple challenges.

The focus of the Innovation Camp in Görlitz was on rural areas and the specific role of the cultural and creative industries as a driving force for solving acute challenges. In cooperation with the federal center of competence for creative industries, current topics such as structural change, shortage of skilled workers and demands on tourism were dealt with on the basis of concrete case studies from 12 to 14 September 2019. Interdisciplinary teams worked out solutions for the existence of rural working and living spaces.

Real case studies from all over Germany showed how the cultural and creative industries respond to the complex needs of rural areas: they write new narratives, create experimental spaces, change value creation and enable cooperation beyond familiar borders.

Over 100 people from all over Germany came to the german-polish boarder to exchange ideas and best practices on how creative industries adress social, economic and cultural issues in rural Germany. Especially the divide of whealthy regions and disadvanteged areas with it´s politcal implications have been from great importance during the innovation camp.

In 4 four interdisciplinary workshop teams the participants developed their own perspectives on the single questions. How do we gain more rent spaces to rebring younger people in rural areas? How do we connect multiple and very individual creative off site spaces with each other to enable interdependet learnings? How do location independent learning sites contribute to life long learning methods in rural areas? All these parly wicked problems have been creatively disassembled and restructured to propose new perspectives and solutions.

The event was a great success and will propably be repeated in the coming years.