Angela Merkel listens, explains, shows perspectives. In the live format “The Chancellor in Conversation”, fourteen artists and cultural workers report on their plight in the pandemic. The head of government parries every criticism, no matter how small, with certainty: bridging aids, hygiene concepts, incidence values. It is well-known routine for women chancellors. But when it is the turn of a freelance musician from Cologne, she gets a fierce headwind. “I have to clearly contradict you that this economic aid is getting where it should have got,” criticizes the musician. The help went by many freelancers, and “the self-employed person, in the case of a musician, hardly has the opportunity to obtain compensation”. A solution? The Chancellor only has to point out the basic security,whose basic entitlement is 446 euros. “Otherwise I can only keep my fingers crossed for all of us that it will end quickly.” So cross your fingers as a political strategy?
The scene at least reveals that more than a year after the pandemic began, many freelance musicians, actresses and other artists are still falling through the state safety net. You have to repay immediate aid in full because it is tied to operating costs, which freelance artists usually hardly incur. The November and December aid stalled and some were not paid until March or not at all. Anyone who has applied for the new start-up aid for the self-employed since mid-February of this year will receive at least 1250 euros a month from January to June, but not only have to live on it, but also possibly pay off accumulated debts. But there are also signs of confidence.
Because where there is no state aid for the cultural scene, private foundations and sponsors have committed themselves with particular dedication in the past Corona year. Not only does the money often arrive faster and with less bureaucracy where it is urgently needed. It's also far more than in previous years. As the latest figures from the German Central Institute for Social Issues (DIZ) show, the volume of donations from private households in the past year for cultural and monument preservation alone was 328 million euros - a whopping 65 million euros above the previous year's total. The German Donation Council also confirms this positive trend. Because large and corporate donations do not play a role in the statistics of the German Donation Council, their number is somewhat lower. But you can still be optimistic:According to their special evaluation, citizens spent more than 151 million euros on the preservation of culture and monuments. That was around 23 million euros more than in the previous year.
According to the Donation Council, over a third of the money went to local projects that supported cultural workers.
“A lot of work has been done on the scene.
There were a lot of organizations that set up Corona aid funds, "says Max Mälzer, Managing Director of the German Donation Council.
What kind of private organizations are there that step in where the corona pandemic is endangering the local cultural scene?
For example, there are around 410 community foundations in Germany in which people come together to get involved and set up private "funding pots".
Because they know the local cultural scene, they can provide targeted help.
Private corona funding pot
One example is the Tübingen community foundation. Review: It is March 24th, 2020. As everywhere in Germany, the first lockdown has been in effect for two days. Constanze Schemann-Grupp walks across the market square of the university town, people keep their distance, but suddenly many people stop in the middle of the square. An opera singer has put down a hat in front of him and intones one of “the most beautiful Verdi arias”, Schemann-Grupp remembers that day. "It was so sad that someone who usually appears in large houses had to show his difficult situation in this way," says the Tübingen woman. At the same time, the motto of the Tübingen Community Foundation, of which she is chairman, came to mind: "Together we are strong". As a result, the foundation set up a corona funding pot,from which help for individual artists should flow immediately and unbureaucratically. Together with an appeal for donations by the Schwäbisches Tagblatt, a total of 300,000 euros were collected for the art and culture scene. In addition, the foundation set up a circle of friends four years ago: Twenty sponsors, including private individuals and companies, commit themselves to support for five years, which among other things helps cultural workers. The thirteen-person board of trustees and the board of directors jointly decide which of the applicants will receive funding. “It's more straightforward than it might sound. Anyone who needs help as an individual basically only has to prove their income, ”says the foundation chairwoman.More than thirty cultural workers and individual cultural associations now receive funding that they would not have received from the state.