“There’s no applause for that”: Berlin’s top candidates talk about their plans for culture

Snorts from the audience – reliability is not a term that is associated with the cultural policy of this legislative period. Two culture senators have already resigned: Joe Chialo (CDU) left last May with the reputation of not having done enough to oppose the proposed cuts to the culture budget. His successor Sarah Wedl-Wilson (independent), who was popular in the cultural landscape, fell after a year over the affair surrounding illegally awarded funding for anti-Semitism prevention projects.

At the end of April, the incumbent Finance Senator Stefan Evers (CDU), who is now also responsible for culture, the budget cuts he helped initiate during Chialo’s time, took over. (Quote Chialo: “It runs top-down”)

Hardly any dissent among the SPD, the Left and the Greens

Evers has not made any public appearances as a Senator for Culture since he took up his second term in office, which made the audience’s interest even greater when they joined the panel discussion shortly before the opening game of the World Cup on the question “What is Berlin’s culture worth?” has found. The top candidates of the “democratic parties”, Elif Eralp (Left), Werner Graf (Greens), Steffen Krach (SPD) and Evers, who appeared to be a more suitable interlocutor for the CDU than the governing mayor, were invited.

All four candidates spoke in detail about reliability and trust, Eralp and Graf from the opposition position, which was naturally more comfortable during the election campaign. Steffen Krach also wanted, if possible, to stop talking about the dramas of the past for which the SPD was partly responsible, and instead wanted to “look forward”, and named the preservation of work spaces for artists, better working conditions and the implementation of a cultural funding law that has been in the works for a long time, which, among other things, is intended to ensure more reliable planning in the cultural sector, as his party’s cultural policy priorities.

This largely corresponds to the plans of the Greens and the Left, who generally showed little dissent in the evening. Use of spaces, strengthening the independent scene and protection of artistic freedom were other points to which everyone quickly nodded together.

However, Elif Eralp also demanded a strong financial injection for culture. Your party wants to gradually increase the budget back to three percent of the total budget, until recently this had shrunk to around two percent.

Evers finally addressed this point specifically and used it to differentiate himself from the rest of the group. “You can promise anything here (…). But if someone believes in these three percent, then they are not recognizing reality.” Above all, you have to think about how you can create resilience.

Joe Chialo once cultivated this demand, but he failed to develop a long-term strategy beyond austerity. Wedl-Wilson had at least started working on a future concept called “Berlin 2035”, whose future is now also up in the air.

How can this resilience be increased? “By dealing honestly with each other!” was the answer from the former management consultant Evers. “That may not be applauded now. But they won’t hear any unrealistic promises from me.”

“We don’t want to promise everything,” replied Eralp at the end of the event, “but it is important to describe goals!” It is not clear that the coalition has any goals at all. The incumbent Senator for Culture did little to counter this in terms of content that evening.