Agency instead of powerlessness: Agency and (cultural) participation in border areas

The 7th INTERKULTUR Federal Congress with this year's theme Spaces of Participation - Spaces of Action will be held in Potsdam from September 13-15, 2023.

Global crises lead to exclusion, threaten participation and cohesion and exacerbate conflicts. The pressure to act is growing. How can we take action? What do spaces of participation look like? We want to work this out in various specialist forums:
Spaces of remembrance, spaces of action, border spaces, classrooms, future spaces, open spaces.

The Federal Congress on Interculture aims to create space for equal participation, but also space for negotiating conflicts and for self-confident and active participation in shaping social and cultural life. Cultural participation in rural areas and intercultural opening processes of cultural institutions are cross-cutting themes of the congress.

The following speakers will be present: Minister of State Claudia Roth, Minister Dr. Manja Schüle, Prof. Naika Foroutan, Tayo Awosusi-Onutor, Charlotte Wiedemann, Nadine Seidu, Fatma Aydemir, Thomas Krüger, Dr. Nkechi Madubuko, Raphael Moussa Hillebrand, Dr. Simone Mergen and many more ...

Emilia Socha, research associate at the TRAWOS Institute (HSZG), will give a keynote speech entitled "Handlungsmacht statt Ohnmacht: Agency und (Kulturelle) Teilhabe in Grenzräumen" (agency and (cultural) participation in border areas ) on her current work in the research project"BePart - Beteiligung und Partnerschaften im Strukturwandel. Penetrating social innovations in Lusatia and strengthening them in practice (10/2022 - 09/2025)" and other TRAWOS projects.

The Federal Congress is a joint event of the Federal Council for Cultural Diversity and the Plattform Kulturelle Bildung Brandenburg, part of the Brandenburg Society for Culture and History.

The Goethe-Institut Dresden Center for International Cultural Education will organize the expert forum Border Spaces together with the Plattform Kulturelle Bildung Brandenburg.
Borders are markers, the results of complex negotiation processes, but also insurmountable barriers. The constant interplay between separation and overcoming, between limitation and delimitation is an essential feature of border areas.
The expert forum has set two focal points that repeatedly overlap. On the one hand, we are focusing on the regional East German border area: What is happening in the Polish-Czech-German border area? What dynamics are set in motion by the borders? What is the role of cultural border crossers?
In a figurative sense, on the other hand, it is about the borders of discourses and fields of work, in particular about the interactions and border crossings between cultural and political education.

In the Border Spaces Expert Forum, we would like to give concrete actors from the border spaces plenty of space to express and share their experiences. Using presentations and six best practice examples, we want to work out what cultural participation along visible and invisible borders can achieve.