Are cultural practitioners, promotional grants and audiences going their separate ways?

According to researchers in the cultural field, the public's appreciation of high culture is quite pronounced. This appreciation, however, apparently prompts only a very small portion of the population to actively take advantage of cultural offerings. The educated middle-class citizen of the 20th century is giving way to the 21st-century consumer of events and media, who still values the significance of high culture, but personally prefers the culture of events, with its open-air events, museum nights, pop concerts and the cinema, and otherwise increasingly enjoys culture in the privacy of his own home. Culture via TV, Internet, DVD and canned music.

Cultural practitioners, cultural and education policy-makers, funding institutions and scientists are racking their brains to come up with the right strategies to reach the cultural consumers of today and tomorrow. But the debate on a cultural leitmotif that would provide orientation for funding requirements, promotion concepts and cultural producers usually ends as soon as it comes to defining what culture actually consists of.

At the same time, the demand for redistribution of funds is voiced with striking regularity. By what gauge should the value of cultural production be measured? According to visitor numbers, the mandate for cultural education policies, a cost/benefit analysis or programme quality?

Bastions of high culture such as the opera and concert halls loudly voice complaints about the cutbacks expected of them, and yet they remain the most highly subsidised realm with the most drastically declining visitor numbers. In contrast, interest in modern art on the part of the younger generation is growing disproportionately, and this surely cannot be attributed merely to successful educational policy. Museums and exhibition spaces discovered strategic marketing early on, introducing their own education programmes for young people, visitor-friendly opening hours, co-operative projects, museum nights and exhibition portfolios that appeal to as wide a target group as possible and allow for target-group-specific marketing. The only way to go? Or mere toadying to the masses and a concession to superficiality?

And what about film? Between blockbuster and art house cinema, between strengthening the economy and fulfilling cultural duties, it struggles to find an audience. Going to the cinema is one of the most important leisure-time cultural activities, and culture researchers speak of a new trend toward more demanding visual experiences. But are these to be found at the cinema? Even art house theatres offer programmes that skirt the edges of the conventional mainstream, and only the biggest box-office hits run longer than three weeks. But what happens if people no longer yearn for adventure, if the consumption of more demanding films shifts more and more to the private sphere, and the cinema as social venue begins to disappear? What is the attitude of the cinema operators and which role could film festivals play in preserving the cinema as a place of confrontation and experiment?

The needs of the cultural audience, the concepts proposed by cultural practitioners, and Germany's cultural funding strategies with a side glance at Europe and the strategies in neighbouring countries are the themes of the podium "Cultural climate 2006: cultural production, subsidies and the audience on different paths?" This is not conceived as a balancing act, but rather with the intention to kindle a widely diversified discussion on the current cultural climate and the competition for funds, to propose effective concepts, and to devote special attention to film and cinema as a major component in the cultural spectrum.

Participants:

Adrienne Goehler, curator of the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin

Dr. Susanne Keuchel, deputy director of the Zentrum für Kulturforschung, Bonn

Thomas Krüger, president of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn

Dr. Elisabeth Schweeger, director of the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt

Dr. Lars Henrik Gass, director of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

Moderator:

Prof. Dr. Hansjürgen Rosenbauer, author, moderator and filmmaker, Berlin