Super Diversity in Gröpelingen

Respect! The things that the association ‘Kultur vor Ort’ (KvO – Culture on Site) gets going on the old dockland in Bremen is quite remarkable. That was the impression by all participants of the online event in October, which we held together with our alumnus and KvO chair Dr. Lutz Liffers. The association has been active since 1998 and its work has been accompanied by a scientific study at the University of Bremen. 

Education and urban development illustrated in the example of Gröpelingen is the subject of Lutz Liffer’s doctoral thesis; basic knowledge for the development of an education and culture concept for a district that has changed as radically over the last twenty years as no other quarter in Bremen. The closure of the AG Weser shipyard in the mid-1980s has been a traumatic experience, not just for Gröpelingen but for all of Bremen. The question arose if we are now facing impoverishment like comparable quarters in England. The fact that this did not happen is thanks to ‘Kultur vor Ort’ to a certain extent. “Nevertheless, we quickly realized that all conventional concepts of educational work did not work,” said Liffers. “This was due to the dissolution of a very homogeneous population – a working-class milieu comprised of Germans, Turks, and Kurds, who had lived in Gröpelingen their entire lives and gained their self-confidence from working on large ships on the shipyard.” Today, more than 38,000 people from more than 120 nations live in Gröpelingen. Many of them move on after only a few years. Scientists call this super diversity, a phenomenon of modernity. The key to success for ‘Kultur vor Ort’ lay in the language. “Speak with each and every one, in all languages, and if we cannot understand each other through words, then through gestures and depictions,” said Julia Klein, artistic director of the storytelling festival ‘Feuerspuren’ that has become an annual highlight of the cultural scene in Gröpelingen. Julia Klein has also made her way to this diverse concept of storytelling culture through research projects at the University of Bremen. Next year, for the university’s anniversary, we would like to offer another event: culture on site, really there, in Gröpelingen.