From 11-16 September 2023, our project team member Oliver Müller was a guest at the Erlau intergenerational railway station (Generationenbahnhof) in the district of Central Saxony. The Generationenbahnhof was renovated from 2016-2017 with LEADER and municipal funds. Since then, the Generationenbahnhof has made an important contribution to safeguarding services of general interest in rural areas through a combination of services and socio-cultural offerings.
In the professional service sector, the station houses a day care centre and a doctor's surgery in the adjacent building. Events and offers in the areas of culture, education and leisure take place regularly in the volunteer-organised citizens' area: open meetings in the Eger living room, card round, creative meeting and are among the regular offers.
During the week for example, the Eger living room, a kind of coffee party, and a musical cocktail evening took place in the Generationenbahnhof. The participant observation method allowed Oliver Müller to gain important insights into the conditions and success factors of needs-orientated cultural work.
The Generationenbahnhof Erlau is a practice partner in the AMuRaKK joint project, which is being carried out by the Institute for Rural Structural Research together with the Department of Empirical Cultural Studies / Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bonn.
The AMuRaKK project is funded by the BULEplus programme of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).
Contact person at the IfLS: Oliver Müller (mueller[at]ifls.de)
