Ernte – Art Academy Institutions and Their Work in Rural Areas

Ernte was a research project carried out in collaboration with the Thünen Institute for Regional Development e.V. Its aim was to investigate the conditions necessary for successful collaboration between academies of art and stakeholders in rural areas in Germany. What impact do these collaborations have on rural communities? How, in turn, do such collaborations shape the colleges and the students?
We investigated this using the example of the weißensee academy of art berlin. This institution has been collaborating with stakeholders in rural areas for a good sixty years now. This made it possible to examine a long period of time and also to consider long-term effects. The high degree of geographical continuity was striking. Almost all the collaborative projects took place in eastern Brandenburg. The number of students involved, the disciplines covered, the frequency and the duration of the respective projects varied considerably. What they had in common was that they took place within the framework of project-based study: in this context, students develop creative solutions to specific problems. We investigated the conditions under which collaborations with art universities can contribute to the development of villages and small towns. Our project aimed to provide creative professionals, initiatives, institutions and local authorities in rural areas with knowledge about the prerequisites for successful collaborations with art universities.

The publication on the project was released in 2026 by Spector Books.