CULTURE CROPS | Conference Newsletter

Culture Crops: cultural practices in non-urban territories was the theme of this year’s Beyond the Obvious 2019 conference. Held in the border cities of Konstanz, Germany and Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, the conference aimed to spark debate about culture and cultural practices in peripheral territories and to jointly develop advocacy approaches to arts and culture in rural and peripheral areas.

The purpose of the Culture Crops conference was to go “Beyond the Obvious”, developing a more comprehensive approach towards culture and cultural and artistic practices in peripheral and non-urban areas. Practically, this included walking the territories, visiting local initiatives and engaging in dialogue with cultural actors from other projects, but with similar challenges from across Europe.

In an attempt to grasp cultural practices in these territories and understand their needs, Culture Crops created a common ground for fostering debates around three main concepts: the dynamics and organisation of cultural work in peripheral territories, the symbolic discrepancies between urban and rural environments and their impact on the values projected on them, the (non)existing borders between these places, often considered to be transitional and temporary.

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