Strengthening Cultural Offerings in Rural Areas with the Independent Performing Arts - Models for the Professionalisation of Cultural Infrastructures

In Brandenburg, the independent performing arts play an important role in cultural life - especially in rural regions. They bring art and people together, create encounters, stimulate dialogue and open up spaces for participation. However, there is often a lack of stable structures, networking opportunities or reliable local co-operation. This is precisely where the new project "Strengthening cultural offerings in rural areas with the independent performing arts - models for the professionalisation of cultural infrastructures in the rural regions of Brandenburg", funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), comes in. 
The aim of the project is to develop sustainable models to strengthen the cultural infrastructure in Brandenburg's rural regions. Together with artists, venues, municipalities and local initiatives, the project is investigating what makes successful Arts Management and Cultural Work possible in rural areas - and how the independent performing arts can act as a driving force for social cohesion. 
An important component is research into the conditions for success: What factors contribute to the long-term success of artistic work, collaborations and cultural offerings in rural areas? The findings will be used to develop practical recommendations and tools to support artists, event organisers and administrations alike.

The project builds on the successfully established networking project "Brandenburger Spielorte" (https://freie-daku-brandenburg.de/brandenburger-spielorte) of the Landesverband Freie Darstellende Künste Brandenburg, which has been making a decisive contribution to the visualisation of venues in the state of Brandenburg and their networking with artists and cultural administrations for several years.

At the same time, a digital knowledge and networking platform is being created under the Head of Prof. Dr Ellen Euler (FHP), which will make the actors, venues and projects more visible, pool resources and initiate new collaborations. Part of the project work is the creation of openly accessible, digital self-learning units that impart skills for Arts Management and Cultural Work in rural areas. This will make experience and knowledge even more accessible and usable in the long term - even beyond the duration of the project. 
The project recognises the independent performing arts as a cultural practice with particular potential for social participation. They create flexible, creative and often communally conceived forms of publicity - whether on village stages, in community centres, churches, old inns or in the open air. Together with the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, the Brandenburg State Association of Independent Performing Arts wants to help ensure that this artistic diversity remains a vibrant part of the state's basic cultural provision in the future and can continue to grow.

Landesverband Freie Darstellende Künste Brandenburg e.V.
The Landesverband Freie Darstellende Künste Brandenburg e.V. represents the interests of the independent performing arts in the state of Brandenburg. It thus represents a self-determined, independent, professional theatre, dance and performance landscape. The state association's Dean's Administrative Office, together with the board, represents the cultural policy interests of its membership and is Brandenburg's information, contact and advice centre in the field of independent performing arts.
Today's 42 members - in addition to a few individual artists, almost exclusively corporations, with a total of almost 700 theatre and dance professionals - unite drama, dance, puppetry, figure and object theatre, music theatre, performance art, participatory formats and much more. 20 of them have their own venues, the majority are on the road. They perform throughout the state and beyond its borders and reach more than a third of the theatre-going public in Brandenburg across all generations.