Culture is our thing!

Pulling wires for the history of technology

High above Altena Castle. Amidst the medieval ambience of one of Germany's most beautiful hilltop castles. Literally in the most amazing professional setting Bettina Hornemann could imagine. From the headquarters of the coordination office for the umbrella organization WasserEisenLand eV, the cultural and media management graduate not only enjoys fabulous views of the old wire-pulling town of Altena. At the same time, the coordinator of one of North Rhine-Westphalia's largest cultural networks looks with enthusiasm, pride, and appreciation at the passion, ideas, and muscle power with which people in South Westphalia have invested in technological progress for centuries. Contributing to preserving the cultural heritage of one of Europe's oldest industrial regions for future generations, breathing new life into it, and marketing it for cultural tourism – that's what drives Bettina Hornemann at the control center for South Westphalian industrial culture.

Here on site, she pulls all the stops in communication and coordination for the numerous dedicated WasserEisenLand stakeholders. From website maintenance and publications to advising association members and managing the South Westphalia-wide festival network FERROMONE: In her professional role, the native of Märkisch-Märkisch fuels the public relations work of the competence network and launches seamless marketing campaigns.

Pulling out all the stops for teamwork

Encouraging people to experience, discover, and participate in a real industrial setting. Attracting them with all the means of art, culture, and entertainment available to them, in order to highlight the significance and recreational value of South Westphalia's industrial heritage far into the region and beyond, is what Bettina Hornemann is passionate about – just like her WasserEisenLand colleagues from all over South Westphalia, as well as the districts of Hagen and Ennepetal, and parts of the Altenkirchen district in northern Rhineland-Palatinate. This is precisely why the stakeholders from large and small industrial museums, technical monuments, associations, and municipalities come together again and again. They then forge ideas together, launch projects, stimulate knowledge transfer, or create festival fever.

Only through such collaborative collaboration can the diverse formats that celebrate South Westphalia's cultural heritage emerge: interactive steel journeys through time, wire-string acts in a historic factory complex, spectacular fire shows in historic salt mines, and artistic acts centered around Germany's oldest blast furnace facility. And only within a shared network can many other ideas with fantastic perspectives be spun.

Theater messages belong in the center

Located in the heart of Hagen between Spinngasse and Goldbergstraße, right in the pedestrian zone, at Kampstraße 13, the commitment of the "Theaterbotschaft" (Theater Embassy) in this cozy shop is unique in Germany. Since April 2021, the doors of the prestigious "branch" of the Hagen Theater have been wide open. For intercultural encounters, for creative processes, for direct exchange, and above all for the people of Hagen and the surrounding area. Marc Debie, who has been passionate about the performing arts and music since his early years, is active locally in his distinctive role as Theater Ambassador. As a contact person, coordinator, and networker, the trained cultural and media manager is personally available: for immediate information about current productions, bookable group arrangements, district projects, participatory activities, or theater education offerings of the Hagen Theater. He also actively engages with municipal and cultural partner organizations. Inspiring people about the diverse options available, advising them, supporting them in planning trips to the theater or organizing their own cultural events, engaging in dialogue with other cultural venues, and collaborating with other cultural professionals to create added value in the region – these are all aspects of Marc Debie's work that he greatly values.

...and from there to the public

He is particularly pleased when he can infect people with his fascination for art, theater, dance, and music who previously thought: "That's not for me." Being able to contribute to breaking down inhibitions and barriers through his commitment is of great importance to the theater ambassador at Kampstraße 13 in Hagen, now and in the future. The repertoire of the theater's own showroom includes actively promoting theater in a central location and enabling cultural participation on many levels.

Whether it's creative workshops, readings, discussions, or small performances. Whether it's consulting on municipal musical theater, ballet, drama, children's and youth theater, or concerts: The Theaterbotschaft, located in the former optician's shop, is a contact, action, and presentation space all rolled into one. The theater stage, of course, takes center stage: Visitors can gain insight into the working worlds of theater makers and discover that theater, while beautiful, is also hard work.

One desk - 1000 topics

Her home base is Lüdenscheid and the surrounding area. The freelance editor travels everywhere, tracking down stories for reports, portraits, and articles. These are stories from cultural institutions, business, local politics, education, society, ... all in all: stories about what's happening in the region, about energy and cultural developments, that Bettina Görlitzer finds important to tell.

It's part of being creative that ideas, research results, information sources, and current news about small hills and colorful mountains occasionally pile up on your desk at home. For years, cultural policy content from all over South Westphalia has also been creeping in among the 1,000 topics, as the Lüdenscheid native also contributes to our "Q" newsletter editorial team. Gathering cultural knowledge in order to share a comprehensive amount of cultural knowledge with the community is something she does regularly. Both privately and professionally, these are moments and encounters that bring Bettina Görlitzer great joy.

Time for connecting communication

Whether it's taking time out in nature with her dog Billy or getting up close and personal with journalists on her doorstep, the editor appreciates the thrill of discovering inspiration, peeking behind the curtains, opening doors, and critically examining connections. She thoroughly enjoys all of this, and she consciously makes time for it in all her projects: conversations, listening, networking! It's important to her to use her writing to inform readers about what's happening in their community and to give people and initiatives a public voice through their writing. She firmly believes that communicating about others and learning about them fosters community and increases our knowledge of and about each other. Especially in times of so-called fake news, the importance of journalistically researched facts is greater than ever!

Bettina Görlitzer is a prime example of countless editors and authors, both permanent and freelance, who use their writing to showcase regional events in words and pictures, portray cultural work, and passionately tell stories from the South Westphalian cultural region. And who knows when these stories will eventually become history.

A cultural venue for all must be supported by many

The Q is a brand new "Third Place," born out of the social and cultural needs of the people in rural Netphen-Deuz, run on a voluntary basis and professionally developed by the Qulturwerkstatt association. A meeting place and cultural venue for everyone naturally requires reliable support from many. The motivated core team of this still very young initiative has been able to recruit an incredible number of Qomplizes—helping hands and creative minds—locally and now even further afield within a relatively short period of time. Furthermore, the Qulturwerkstatt for the Q receives funding from the NRW state government's "Third Places" program and has received its second star as part of the REGIONALE2025 award. For Giulia Gendolla, the move to Netphen is a comeback; her husband, Stefan Bünnig, is a newcomer who is happy to be returning to the countryside after years in big cities. Both of them not only started a family in Netphen, but also founded the Qulturwerkstatt. Gabriele Schlemper, the third member of the group, contributed the idea of finding the right location: the empty, former wood warehouse of her father's carpentry shop seems to be made for a "third place".

If you can juggle, you can also coordinate

Once an idea has been given a concrete location, that's when the real work begins. It involves developing financing concepts, designing spatial concepts, not only recruiting but also coordinating volunteers, letting inspiration flow and then recapturing it. Bringing everyone and everything together and keeping it together in civic engagement alongside work and family: this can sometimes degenerate into a juggling act. But that, too, is an art.

In recent years, the concept of the "third place" has (again) become more prominent in cultural policy. The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia promotes "third places" as a social focal point for art, culture, intergenerational interaction, encounters, and shared action. In addition to the Netphen Culture Workshop, the Schalksmühle community with its 8 gables in the former Kreuzkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) and the Bad Berleburg library are also on the path to becoming "third places."

That’s why we must dare to create more art!

Moreover, extravagant and experimental art is not necessarily as native here as in the metropolises, where colorful birds of paradise find a better climate and a suitable environment for survival. But: Colorful birds are no longer as noticeable there. Our region still offers enough niches and spaces that are not yet occupied; there is still sufficient scope for action and development potential here – in other words, plenty of room for improvement for every species of artist. Jennifer Cierlitza is well aware of this potential and utilizes precisely these strengths of the region: the space, the many spaces, the space, the many spaces, and the young artists' urge for change. Since 2020, the young artist and cultural mediator from the Rhineland, who studied art at the University of Siegen and at Belas Artes in Lisbon, has been the managing director and curator of the established and renowned Kunstverein Siegen e. V.

Opening up new possibilities in the mind and on the surface

While the region's urban centers, such as Siegen, Hagen, Iserlohn, and Lüdenscheid, are magnets for artistic creation, numerous artists have also set up their galleries in rural areas, in a listed building, or a train station. The region boasts around 25 art associations and at least 60 galleries, studios, or artist workshops. Tracking down individual artists is almost impossible; they are somehow everywhere, not always visible, but contributing to making the cultural climate more paradisiacal.

To implement her plan to use current trends in art to open up new spaces for thought and action in the region, Jennifer Cierlitza has developed a catchy strategy: By networking across all disciplines and between established artists and young artists, engaging in dialogue with the public, engaging in participatory processes, and conquering new spaces and places in the city and in rural areas, art is offered new perspectives.

On the other side of the camera!

Does the photographic self-portrait go beyond the obligatory selfie? Dirk Vogel, a graduate photo designer from Altena, experienced the change of perspective for our series firsthand. He normally works behind the camera and is passionate about photographing landscapes, architecture, and, above all, people. For example, he stages the cultural professionals for our "Culture is our Thing" campaign, allowing them to direct the shots themselves and decide on the setting.

In the age of digital photography via smartphone and tablet, and the possibilities offered by image editing, photographers are unfortunately confronted with a declining perception of the value of their artistic work. This leaves the question of what distinguishes a self-portrait from a selfie only vaguely answered. The result of Dirk Vogel's self-experiment is clear: the photographer is now quite certain that his place in the future will definitely be behind the camera.

Unfiltered charming, unvarnished real

Dirk Vogel's credo is that people should appear authentic, unfiltered, unretouched, not wrinkle-free, not distorted by exaggeration, but occasionally emphasizing a (perceived) flaw, not over-styled—unless it's part of the type—but rather natural. Dirk Vogel is passionate about analogue photography and thus about quality: With a 36-exposure film in the camera and the prospect of having to develop the images by hand, there are natural limits to the mass production.

Photographers can and should dare to experiment with photography and engage in dialogue with each other and with the public. Artistic and technically sophisticated photography is the perfect medium for confronting people with their quirks and edges, highlighting the unique profile of a landscape, showing the decay of a building, or even presenting aesthetics in all their beauty.

Get on the boards and down with them

The creators of the Bruchwerk Theater in Siegen want to explore precisely these many aspects of a stage and put them in the spotlight. To develop a theater scene—a scene in and for the theater—interaction with the audience, sharing the stage with theater enthusiasts, personally involving visitors in the theater's events, and professional acting are all natural components of the Bruchwerk Theater concept. Here, people are not only brought onto the stage; the stage is also brought to the people. To achieve this, the Bruchwerk Theater has adopted its own open understanding of theater and a successful blend of professionalism, passion, participation, eye-level interaction, and mental accessibility.

Milan Pešl (right) is a trained actor, musician, and composer of numerous theater and radio play productions. He returned to his hometown of Siegen through the Bruchwerk Theater. Tim Lechthaler (left), a native of Siegen, studied German and philosophy in Siegen and has been involved in theater work since his student days. David Penndorf (center) was born in Borna and ended up in Siegen after studying media and communications. He is a co-founder of the theater group tollMut, a former student initiative with which the Bruchwerk remains closely connected and intertwined.

Courageous cultural entrepreneurs

In 2017, Milan Pešl, David Penndorf, and Tim Lechthaler founded the Bruchwerk Theater in the former Hettlage building in Siegen's upper town as Siegen's first studio theater, thus taking the bold step into independence and becoming a cultural enterprise. This bold step was also due to the desire to establish a new theater structure. The Bruchwerkers see their cultural enterprise as a complement to, rather than competition for, the cultural landscape of Siegen and the region; networking with other theaters and cultural institutions is therefore of paramount importance. In front of, behind, and next to the stage of the Bruchwerk Theater, the concentrated power of a broad and interdisciplinary team has come together. They are all united by a passion for acting and a desire to pass on this passion and their knowledge in order to awaken theater enthusiasm in the people of the region.

Although the Bruchwerk Theater is unique in this form in the region, the Bruchwerk Theater team shares its goals with many other theater makers and providers in the South Westphalia cultural region, including 18 arthouse theaters, around 50 mostly volunteer-run theaters with and without their own venues, and numerous independent theater makers and theater educators.

They all want to use their means and approaches to encourage people to act, create exchange, impart cultural skills and bring themes to the stage that touch the audience and, ideally, make them think.

For better cultural absorption

The gramophone funnel, which Ulrike Wesely from the MuT Sauerland e.V. association holds in her hands and to her ear, stands in all its glory in the Schrabbenhof cultural estate in Kirchhundem and fits perfectly with the association's motto: not just to broadcast culture, but also to allow people to participate in cultural creation processes. Because those who acquire cultural skills in this way are also better able to absorb culture. The Sauerland native is a trained musician and theater educator, managing director of the Schrabbenhof cultural estate and also the artistic director of the MuT-Sauerland e.V. association. MuT is the abbreviation for music and theater, but as a play on words, it also symbolizes the program: Since 2013, the association has managed the former Schrabbenhof estate in rural Kirchhundem-Silberg as a meeting and event space to establish culture close to the community. Ulrike Wesely and her energetic team spend countless and endless hours putting together a demanding music and theater program and constantly developing new cultural projects (it should only be mentioned in passing that the cultural property also houses a flea market, a local history museum, and a café).

Be heard through cooperation

Bringing renowned artists to the region is just as much a part of the core idea as discovering local artists and giving them a platform here. Accordingly, networking and collaboration are the cornerstone of MuT's cultural work, working with other actors to make culture more audible, as if through a funnel.

MuT Sauerland is a prime example of the well over 1,000 cultural organizations of all kinds—theaters, choirs, local history societies, music clubs, and more—in the region, which, sometimes on a small scale, sometimes on a larger scale, but always with immense hours of effort, ensure the region's cultural life. This cultural commitment is unpaid, but also invaluable.

Style is an expression of recognition culture

Restoring the Rödinghausen estate in Menden-Lendringsen, filling it with an industrial history exhibition, and opening it to the public: this truly cost Jutta Törnig-Struck and her hard-working helpers an immense amount of work, energy, and admittedly, nerves. The museum director recounts that she sometimes collapsed from exhaustion on a sofa in the exhibition. With an enormous effort, the former residence of Baron von Dücker was transformed into a museum of industrial culture. As the founder of the former Rödinghausen iron factory, the Baron was one of the few noblemen to become entrepreneurs. The art historian attaches great importance to aesthetically presenting the products of regional companies in order to lend a certain dignity to the work behind each individual object. A culture of recognition simply has a great deal of style. For example, simple everyday objects such as pins are arranged into an almost dressy necklace. After all, countless people have invested a great deal of brainpower and muscle power in product development, the design of machines, the construction of factories, manufacturing, trade and distribution - and continue to do so today.

Energy and strength for culture

Jutta Törnig-Struck's own family history is closely connected to Menden, perhaps one reason for her love of local history and the drive needed to cope with long working days and short evenings off.

Like Jutta Törnig-Struck, many people draw strength from their work on the history of labor. Rödinghausen Estate in Menden is just one of approximately 350 industrial heritage sites in the "WasserEisenland – Industrial Culture in South Westphalia" network. A few industrial heritage sites are managed by full-time staff, while the majority are in the hands of volunteers. They all perform competent work and demonstrate above-average dedication in the forge, the mine, the ironworks, the charcoal kiln, the coppice, the foundry museum… and thus demonstrate their appreciation for the hard work of the people in the region.

Storytelling is a pleasure for all the senses

However, it is a lengthy process until the beautifully arranged fruit becomes a delight. Good storytelling is a cultural craft that must be learned carefully and takes time. Finally, the collected fairy tales become a delicacy for the ears and sometimes also for the mouth. The Ohrenschmaus group serves the audience fairy tales for young and old from all over the world, from the Brothers Grimm, legends, and anecdotes from the region as the main course, often accompanied or interrupted by singing and music. Occasionally, the audience is also offered fairy tale tea or fragrant bread – thus, the storytelling session becomes a delight for all the senses. When Wiltrud Köser-Klöckner is in her narrative element, then not only the ears but also the eyes emerge, for the storyteller uses her hands and feet, facial expressions, and gestures to bring her stories to life as a visual experience in the minds of her listeners. No one can escape the fascination of her presented stories.

Storytelling is an art

The Ohrenschmaus fairy tale group is part of a steadily growing, loose, informal storytelling network in South Westphalia. The storytellers in this network aim to restore greater importance to the intangible cultural heritage of oral storytelling in the region. Storytelling takes place (almost) everywhere, because there is room and space for good stories everywhere: in castles and castle ruins, in gardens and forests, in yurts and museums, in shops and public spaces. The line between truth and fiction is often blurred. Who knows what is true and what is invented?

Strictly speaking, cultural practitioners in every field do nothing other than tell a story, simply using different artistic forms of expression. In South Westphalia, there are many freelance storytellers, theater educators, authors, and cultural landscape guides who share their stories in their own unique way.

Encountering your own history

Dr. Eckhard Trox, the long-time director of the Lüdenscheid History Museum, and his team demonstrate in numerous exhibitions, projects, and events that engaging with the history of one's own city and region always also means examining one's own biography and self. Sometimes self-reflection is even necessary to gain access to one's own history and culture. Since the historian, who also serves as chairman of the Association of Westphalian Museums, took the museum under his wing in 1991, what was originally a purely exhibition space has been gradually and sensitively developed and transformed into a meeting place. In addition to the further development and educational enhancement of the permanent exhibition, the staging of various historical themes within the framework of special exhibitions in the museum and the associated Municipal Gallery now plays a significant role in both senses of the word.

Museum as an open urban space

Currently, the museum's spaces are open to all citizens of the city and region, of all ages and nationalities. Artists from a wide variety of disciplines congregate here, working with the people of Lüdenscheid to reshape their city's perspective. However, none of this would be possible without volunteers' commitment to culture: A functioning network and an organized coexistence of full-time staff and committed Lüdenscheid residents is therefore an important building block for maintaining the museum's offerings.

In total, over 100 museums and exhibition spaces, large and small, run by both full-time and volunteers, in the region hold up their own unique reflections of history. Each region and each municipality has its own history, and each museum has a different focus and a unique approach to the past. This is what makes it so diverse.

Away from the region

The ethnologist, who holds a doctorate, was delighted to be able to spend a four-month project fellowship here as the stadt.land.text NRW regional writer in 2020. The fellowship was practically a homecoming: Barbara Peveling was born in Siegen, grew up in Olpe, spent her youth in the Rhineland, and finally found a new home through research for her doctorate in France. However, her stay in South Westphalia was interrupted for the first time after just two weeks by the first lockdown. A second stay followed in the summer and then a third in the fall, which was quickly ended by the accommodation ban. In subsequent years, Barbara Peveling returned to the region to lead a workshop on biographical writing in the Olpe district. Despite (or perhaps even because of?) all the adversities, the on-off relationship opened up a new, completely different, extremely intensive view into the innermost core of the region, but also, in part, an appropriately distanced perspective from afar.

Empowerment as a possibility for a region

Rediscovering the cultural region of South Westphalia as a regional writer, combining personal experiences with the ethnological methods of field research, and exploring the opportunities the region offers—that was the plan for the trained ethnologist and author's stay—and the plan worked. South Westphalians talk openly and willingly about their region, enjoy sharing experiences with those around them, and are happy to look beyond the regional horizon. A wealth of potential for artistic creativity lies dormant within these people, but they need empowerment, as is already the case in urban centers—that is, self-empowerment plus the appropriate resources—to realize it. Artist residencies, i.e., free and safe spaces for creative processes for external artists as well as for artists from the region, are lacking. Creative independence, sufficient resources, and open scope—that is a perfect foundation for a long-lasting, intense love affair.

As part of the residency program stadt.land.text NRW, 10 authors in 10 cultural regions are using a variety of literary and artistic means, media, and actions to create a multifaceted panorama of everyday cultures in NRW and demonstrate how powerful, biting, sensitive, and humorous young German-language literature can be.