Cultural centres and non-urban areas
What does the working group do?
Since its creation in 2016, the working group has helped organise small-scale meetings and webinars, international conferences, and advocacy events. It works as a discussion forum with its own mailing list, contributes to creating international partnerships, consults on policy papers, and interacts with our other multiyear projects, such as Seeds of Sustainability and IN SITU.
Browse our reading room on non-urban culture here.
A little history
Our work on culture and non-urban areas started with two conferences (in Olesnica in 2016 and in Hildesheim in 2017), which resulted, among other outputs, in our Crowd-Sourced Manifesto: Culture for Shared, Smart, Innovative Territories and in the book Vital Village, coordinated by the University of Hildesheim.
In 2020, we joined forces with networks Culture Action Europe, IETM and Trans Europe Halles to give visibility and advocate for non-urban culture. Together, we created an online campaign and a policy paper that was launched during a joint advocacy event. In 2021, the group organised Wide Open Spaces, an online event about non-urban culture after the pandemic. In 2022, we became a consortium partner of IN SITU, a new project on cultural and creative industries in non-urban areas of the EU. This four-year project is funded by the Horizon Europe programme of the European Commission.
In February 2025, the working group merged into the newly-established Community Group on Culture and Creativity in Rural Areas, an initiative we launched in the framework of the EU Rural Pact Community Platform, together with the Centro de Estudios Sociais of the Coimbra University, as a legacy of the IN SITU project.
Join the Community Group on Culture and Creativity in Rural Areas
The group welcomes anyone interested in the topic – cultural practitioners, community organisations, researchers, planners, policymakers, and more. To join the group, you must register on the Rural Pact Platform via an EU account. The process can be initiated by clicking on “Login or register to join this group” on the group’s webpage here. If you don't have an EU account, click on "Create an account" and complete your EU profile first. Then, using your EU account, log into the Rural Pat Platform and complete your Rural Pact profile. Lastly, request to join the Culture and Creativity in Rural Areas community group and wait for approval.