Cultural Education and the Public Image of Rural Areas (KUBILARI II) - Media Coverage of Neusalza-Spremberg

The research question guiding the entire joint project was how cultural education can use artistic and aesthetic methods to make local or regional topics emotionally tangible and collectively workable, as well as to strengthen experiences of self-efficacy. The joint project consists of two sub-projects that approached this question using different methodological approaches.
In a first work package, sub-project II analysed how a municipality has attempted to drive local developments through increased activities in the field of cultural education since 2008. Supported by a network of cooperation partners, staff, artists, participants and citizens who do not take part in the local programmes were to be interviewed about cultural education activities. The transcripts of these interviews are expected to be made available by the DIPF via the FDZ-Bildung.
In parallel, the regional content analysis (ZA8812) of the first work package analysed the local media to determine how the representation of the local area of Neusalza-Spremberg has changed since the town increased its cultural activities. The central research question of the first work package and the regional content analysis was therefore: Does a comprehensive cultural education programme in the rural area of Neusalza-Spremberg create a change in the media representation of the rural area as an idyll worth preserving with agriculture and tourism?
In a second work package, the aim was to analyse how reporting on rural areas in general has changed in recent years in the national media (see study ZA8813). In particular, the period before and after 2006 was analysed, as this was the year in which the Road Map for Arts Education was adopted by the UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education in Lisbon, as well as the period before and after 2015, the year in which the German government agreed to strengthen rural areas. Within the thematic cycle analysis, further milestones were to be identified from the media coverage and phases of changing reporting were to be formed. The central question of the second work package was: Is national reporting on rural areas still focussing on the internationally known topics or are there thematic shifts in media reporting? In the third work package, the various work packages of the two sub-projects were brought together with the help of a transfer conference and an exchange with representatives from politics, business and culture.