Statement by the Cologne Festivals of the Performing Arts

on the preservation and strengthening of the festival landscape in Cologne, the current

budget discussions and the concept of the depot

Festivals - colognian and international flair for Cologne

Festivals are an integral and indispensable part of Cologne's artistic and cultural life and characterise the city's identity as a European cultural metropolis that stands for diversity, openness, exchange and international cooperation. Cologne's festivals are characterised by the city's local and international flair, diversity and a wide range of artistic forms and formats.

The festivals in Cologne create cultural and meeting places for social dialogue and human interaction. They inscribe themselves into the city community and public life and give a wide range of audiences access to art and culture. The festivals host aesthetically and politically relevant guest performances from Germany and numerous other countries, bringing important impulses to Cologne. With their high visibility through international co-productions, the Cologne festivals point far beyond the city limits, characterise Cologne's special artistic and cultural landscape and carry Cologne's reputation as an international cultural metropolis into the world.

Protecting and strengthening diversity and radiance

The ‘Cologne Festivals of the Performing Arts’ round table appeals to Cologne's cultural policy to protect and strengthen the diversity and appeal of the independent performing arts community and the festival landscape. This requires not only the renunciation of any cuts for the independent performing arts community and its festivals. Instead, budgets need to be adjusted to compensate for inflation and the minimum fees finally introduced by law. This is the only way to enable the independent performing arts community and its festivals to continue their work for the city and the audience under fair conditions for artists and staff.

The VDK - Verein für Darstellende Künste Köln - has already repeatedly pointed out the persistently precarious situation of the independent performing arts community, to which the independent festivals are also subject: ‘There is no luxury situation from which something could be generously handed over.’ Many festivals of the independent scene, and thus many larger and smaller beacons that have been built up over the years with great expertise, commitment, passion and voluntary work as well as public funding in Cologne, would be destroyed by cutbacks - and once something is broken, it usually cannot be rebuilt.

We expressly endorse the VDK's important demand to the Cologne City Council to ‘exclude the independent scene from any potential cuts.’ The independent performing arts community accounts for more than 50% of the city's cultural offerings and is also in a situation that cannot bear further cuts, but urgently requires increases and compensation for inflation.

In order for Cologne's festivals to be able to continue their work in the medium term, Cologne's cultural budget urgently needs its own festival budget. We call on politicians and the administration to pursue this consistently. Budgeting and applications for festivals, venues and independent groups should be organised separately.

Big rooms for big festivals

Cologne's festivals urgently need access to large stages with the appropriate audience capacity for their programmes. This is the basic prerequisite for Cologne festivals to be able to invite major pioneering guest performances to Cologne. Without access to large stages in Cologne, the festivals cannot fulfil their own potential or the aspirations of a European cultural metropolis with a vibrant festival landscape.

We would therefore like to emphasise once again the importance of the Depot for independent festivals. It is essential for Cologne's performing arts festivals to be able to utilise stage spaces the size of the Depot venues with the corresponding audience capacities. The reorganisation and preservation of the Depot is therefore also of existential importance for the future appeal of Cologne's festivals.

For the same reasons, it is equally essential and existential to continue to promote and support threatened venues such as the TanzFaktur in Cologne-Deutz in particular - an important venue for the independent scene in Cologne and host to many NRW festivals. This also applies to the community centres in Cologne - and here in particular the Alte Feuerwache - whose importance as venues continues to grow in view of the glaring shortage.

Signatories

The festivals in the ‘Round Table of Cologne Festivals of the Performing Arts’ association:

·     africologneFESTIVAL (Gerhardt Haag and Kerstin Ortmeier)

·     Circus Dance Festival (Tim Behren)

·     tanz.tausch – tanz- und performance festival (Mechtild Tellmann)

·     Sommerblut Kulturfestival (Rolf Emmerich and Anna-Mareen Henke)

·     ORBIT - Festival für aktuelles Musiktheater (Sandra Reitmayer and Christina C. Messner)

·     Freihandelszone - Ensemblenetzwerk Köln e.V. und "URBÄNG! – Festival für performative Künste (A.TONAL.THEATER, Futur 3, MOUVOIR, WEHR51)

·     SommerAkademie & (Rh)einfach, (TanzFaktur, Slava Gepner & Alec Ernst)