New Partnership Programme ‘LOKAL’ for Smaller Towns and Regions Announces First Round of Participants

The majority of Europeans still reside outside major cities (Eurostat, 2023). Throughout Europe, there are numerous smaller towns, communities, and neighbourhoods that are often overlooked as they are located outside metropolitan areas. The increasing inequalities between cultural hubs in major cities and more remote areas diminish regional cultural life and threaten social cohesion. But local cultural organisations, civil society initiatives, and social networks play a crucial role in sustaining a high quality of public life and upholding common ground within Europe’s regions.

This is why the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) has partnered with the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) to launch ‘LOKAL’ – a new programme for culture and public engagement. LOKAL – a term that refers to ‘local’ but also evokes the idea of social meeting places such as pubs in German and other European languages – supports arts and cultural organisations in collaborating with social community networks in smaller places outside large metropolitan regions. The programme’s aim is to create new cultural-social networks that engage local residents in addressing tangible issues within their communities – initially in at least 26 smaller towns across Germany, later on also across other European regions.

In June, the first 13 cultural actors to receive LOKAL support for backing up their crucial local initiatives in different regions of Eastern, Western and Southern Germany were announced. All participants of this first cohort work in rural villages and regional towns with populations as small as 70 inhabitants up to 90.000 residents. The regions in which these initiatives will take place are all heavily challenged by the departure of young people, a lack of infrastructure, and limited financial resources. Most of the participating cultural organisations and local groups are confronted with increasing polarization, hostilities and cultural confrontations with local anti-democratic forces.

The LOKAL programme’s financial support and training offer enables these 13 cultural initiatives to seek new local allies beyond culture, such as sports clubs, nursing homes or fire brigades, to jointly develop artistic projects. In these projects, professional artists will collaborate with residents on location to explore social and cultural issues that directly impact their communities.

A key element of LOKAL that was co-developed and will be co-implemented by ECF is the facilitation of knowledge exchange and networking among the first LOKAL cohort from Germany and many more similar initiatives facing similar challenges in other remote regions of Europe. In November 2025, the LOKAL partners in collaboration with the Polish National Cultural Center will host a first European networking meeting in the regional town of Swidnica, in the Lower Salesia region of Poland. Local practitioners and philanthropic as well as public co-financing partners of likeminded local and regional cultural action from all over Europe will meet for exchanging and discussing about how to develop LOKAL into a growing pan-European solidarity coalition of local and regional cultural initiatives.