Ma-ma-Märchenprinz: Cultural education in rural areas
Investigation of personal, socio-spatial and supply-related influencing factors
Abstract (pre-Corona release of December, 2019; updated May, 2020)
In three successive studies, the Ma-ma-Märchenprinz project examines personal (What is the cultural appreciation like?), socio-spatial-related (What is the cultural offer in rural areas?) and supply-related (Are there specific rural characteristics for cultural activities?) factors influencing cultural practice in rural areas. A supply study (1) examines how content, subjects and the mediation of cultural education are presented in rural areas. A case-control study (2) examines which predetermining contextual conditions and personal factors influence participation in offers of cultural education. Finally, two in-depth studies (3) investigate the extent to which users of cultural education distinguish themselves in their subjective experience, for example with regard to aesthetic experience, in urban vs. rural regions.
in detail
Cultural education opens up opportunities for artistic-aesthetic experiences that are essential for comprehensive human education and for participation in cultural and social life. In the development of different living environments in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (but also internationally), a progressive “peripheralization” of rural areas up to the feared “desolation” was formulated by spatial development research, not only with regard to demographic and socio-economic context conditions, but also with regard to educational opportunities and opportunities for cultural participation.
Against this background, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) has established a research funding that is devoted to the capabilities of cultural education in rural areas. In this respect, the project “Ma-ma-Märchenprinz”: Cultural education in rural areas raises the following questions:
Which cultural education offers exist in rural areas? Who takes part in these offers? What are beneficial conditions for participation in cultural offers? How is “culture” learned, i.e. which formal and informal forms are used and how? Is there a specific „rural“ way of using cultural education in times of the Internet?
To answer these questions, the range of cultural education in two rural districts in Bavaria is recorded and analyzed in a socio-geographic way: The Dachau district (in the catchment area of the metropolis of Munich) is compared with the Cham district (peripherally located in the Bavarian Forest).
The users of rural educational offers are interviewed in a case-control design and compared with control persons from the general population in these circles. The reasons for cultural engagement can be analyzed by comparing people who are passionate about culture with other people who live in the same area and have the same age and gender. Further need for cultural offers can be derived from this.
In addition, in two in-depth studies (choral singing / visual arts), participants of educational offers from metropolises are compared to those from rural areas. They are examined for specific visual / hearing / participation motives and habits using detailed psychological assessment procedures during their cultural activities. It is analyzed to what extent there are regional differences in their aesthetic experience, as well as the selection of cultural offers, due to different influences as a result of regionally preconfigured offers. The studies are designed and carried out by an interdisciplinary team from the areas of art didactics, psychology, public health research and teaching-learning research, in cooperation with regional cultural actors. The results are reported back to the actors of cultural education in the examined peripheral areas.