By: Safia Dickersbach* The cultural foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, decided to initiate a new thematic focus in its sponsorship work. The programme is called TURN and – as explained in the introductory statement – it is supposed to deal with ‘Africa’. African culture Although there are certainly good intentions behind this new initiative, the information published about this programme on the website of the ‘Kulturstiftung’ and the funding guidelines which were recently released raise more questions than answers. I want to share some of my anger and disappointment with you as follows: 1. ‘TURN’ is supposedly dedicated to foster ‘German-African cultural relations’. Without a doubt a cultural exchange is necessary to develop mutual understanding and communication. As opposed to Germany, Africa is not one country, but rather a whole continent consisting of more than 50 individual countries. The Kulturstiftung apparently considers all those countries to be culturally homogenous enough to be able to entertain coherent ‘cultural relations’ with Germany. Could it be that the people at the Kulturstiftung are talking about 50 different relationships between Germany and the individual African countries? But then wouldn’t it seem a bit ambitious to have a jury of three people make decisions involving an entire continent, 50 countries and more than 2000 languages together with the cultures and customs connected to them? Are the three jury members familiar enough with all these countries to fully comprehend their different cultures and languages? And what do these three jury members know about the currently developing new arts and culture scenes on the huge African continent? 2. The budget the Kulturstiftung considers to be sufficient enough to achieve all those goals (see No. 1 above) is a modest 2 million EUR. This is not a joke. The exhibition ‘Who knows tomorrow’ alone which took place in Berlin and showed the works of solely five (!) African artists had a budget of 900,000 EUR. It is ironic to call the provision of 2 million EUR for projects that are supposed to last until 2015 and cover a whole continent a ‘thematic focus’. Especially so if it is a focus of a foundation of the German federal government. Compared with the overall budget of the Federal Republic’s state secretary for culture of over 1 billion EUR per year which includes the budget of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the money which is designated for the TURN – Africa project is nothing more than small change. With such a tiny budget would it then not be more honest and realistic to focus the activities on a few African countries or a specific region of the continent?
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 04:28:17 +0000
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