Those who make art in Berlin often act out of passion – and often against all business sense. Many freelance cultural actors work on a project-by-project basis, moving from exhibition to exhibition, from premiere to premiere, from concert to concert.
If you honestly added up their actual working hours – i.e. creative work plus concept development, proposal writing, public relations and accounting – in most cases they would be below the legal minimum wage. And this in a city whose landlords no longer remember the legend of cheap Berlin. The cost of living is rising, fees are stagnating.
Against this background, this Monday evening in the Deutsches Theater took on an almost historic impact. The first draft of a Berlin culture funding law was presented here – not a feature page dream, but a solid set of rules in the making. The initiative was founded in 2021, and Berlin cultural associations have had initial considerations since 2023.
The participation process began in April 2025, driven largely by the Berlin Cultural Conference Association and supported by the Senate for Cultural Affairs and Social Cohesion. Fifteen specialist groups with more than 120 participants from all sectors, from the independent scene to cultural education, developed the 150-page draft. Areas in particular that have been disproportionately affected by the current austerity measures were also at the table.
Other cities are smarter; Hamburg, for example, spends significantly more on culture
Because the financial background is unpleasant: Berlin’s cultural sector has to deal with savings of well over 100 million euros – disproportionately, painfully. Other cities are smarter: Hamburg, for example, spends proportionally more on culture. The fact that cuts first hit those who are already working precariously is no surprise, but rather structural logic. When project funds shrink, fees shrink. When houses save, they save on the independent scene. And if diversity depends on chance, the city ultimately loses.
It’s about modest minimum standards
So what is it about? Nothing less than modest minimum standards that do not have to be renegotiated from one double budget to the next. “Berlin is not the pioneer when it comes to the cultural funding law,” says Wibke Behrens, board member of the Berlin Cultural Conference, with sober clarity to the taz. But it is precisely the broad solidarity of over 60 associations that is crucial in Berlin: “It creates planning, reliability and also self-confidence among the actors who are more than lobbyists and applicants.”
The central demand is that in the future not around two, but three percent of the state budget should flow into culture. That sounds like a marginality, but it is a political feat. In addition, there are minimum fees for all cultural actors, collective bargaining agreements in institutionally funded institutions, the dynamization of fees and salaries and a limitation on freelance employment relationships. Reporting requirements on gender pay gaps are intended to create transparency. And finally, the question that people tend to avoid in cultural-political advertising blocks: How can old-age poverty be prevented for an entire professional group?
It is also interesting to compare the draft with the Berlin Sports Promotion Act
Another key point of the design is space – that precious resource that is just as competitive in Berlin as affordable living space. Work and presentation locations should be secured by the Berlin workspace program as well as their administration. There will also be two new cultural centers for free music and dance. Cultural actors should have a say at round tables on urban development, when building new schools or even during inevitable rounds of austerity.
In a city in which possible cultural centers are sometimes awarded with a handshake and without much publicity after costly participation processes and parliamentary discussions – think of the Alte Münze – this still does not seem to be a given.
It is also interesting to compare it with the Berlin Sports Funding Act, which the draft of the Cultural Funding Act repeatedly draws. Why, is the implicit question, is popular sport supported as a matter of course, but popular culture is often treated as a decorative accessory? Culture is not just “competitive sport”, i.e. high-gloss entertainment for wealthy audiences.
She is a choir rehearsal in the neighborhood, a theater club at school, a dance workshop at the youth center, and a senior studio in the neighborhood house. In times of social erosion and signs of democratic fatigue, low-threshold cultural offerings are not a luxury, but a must. Just as sports fields are allowed to take up public space, public properties should also be permanently or temporarily available to cultural initiatives free of charge if they do not operate for profit.
A culture funding law would not be an economic demand, but a social contract
In their coalition agreement, the CDU and SPD agreed to introduce a culture funding law. The publication contributions now presented are intended as an intermediate step; A law could actually come into force in 2028. At the evening in the German Theater, the responsible senator, Sarah Wedl-Wilson, reacted positively. One can interpret this as polite optimism – or as a serious signal.
Perhaps the key term hovering over the draft is “normalization”. What applies everywhere should also apply normatively in the cultural sector, which is so indispensable for the well-being of this city: fair work at a fair wage, including occupational safety and protection against dismissal. A culture funding law would therefore not just be an economic demand, but a social contract.
It would establish that culture is not an ornament that can be cut off first in budget crises. That the city does not want to become a biotope for creative industries in which heroic self-exploitation and the law of the strongest applies, but rather wants to create the conditions for the production of sustainable art by many. The draft is therefore a big step in the right direction. So great that it will be remembered for a long time after the evening in the Deutsches Theater.