The aim of the project is to show the specific form of cultural education in rural areas on the basis of four very peripheral regions in Lower Saxony (NDS) (East Frisia, Weser-Elbe triangle, Wendland, Harz) in relation to institutional forms and actor-related processes of planning cultural education opportunities. It will be investigated how rural cultural education is constituted in the interaction of regional specificity, network/cooperation-based actor constellations as well as space-, culture- and education-specific (knowledge-) resources. Field research with research stays of several days in the respective very peripheral regions to be studied are the focus here. The basis of the study is a comparative analysis of the structures and developments of cultural education in the selected regions, which reflect the diversity of rural areas through their heterogeneity, but also enable generalizable analyses.

In order to identify the structural specifics of the region, an analysis of actors and networks (including the formation of types) is carried out in order to reveal the structures of actors in cultural education. On the basis of the types of actors, an analysis of offers is carried out, from which the cultural education practice of rural areas sedimented in the offers becomes apparent. Thus, the breadth of educational opportunities can be analyzed and systematically located. Subsequently, interviews with the pedagogical-cultural actors will be conducted in order to analyze the planning activities for the respective types of actors. In the last step, the perspectives of the institutional structure, the offer structures and the planning action are intertwined and it is revealed how fitting relationships between the region-specific context, the educational needs and interests are created through the transformation into institutional structures and offers.