Deutschherrenbund, Sitz des Kulturamtes und des Ikonenmuseums, Foto: COMMON WORKS/Uwe Schramm
Enabling culture to unfold means accompanying a number of widely different institutions, initiatives and individual personalities. For each of these individual culture participants there is no overall goal, just as there is no intrinsically clear overriding theme for a state cultural policy. A cultural quality in fact emerges predominantly from the players themselves. In many sectors culture defines social and individual themes and values. Consequently a support strategy must constantly react to these changes and cannot underlie any master plan. Institutionally supported facilities also develop new assignments and fields of activity and thus require a professionally competent and flexible partner on the side of public authorities.
Financial support is only a part of project support. Monetary injections undoubtedly wield effective power, but state support covers a much wider field of measures. From telephone information to complex counselling and supplying information and contacts involves a comprehensive range of preparations. Each form of fiscal support is also always accompanied by extensive advisory and service functions. They range from ongoing feasibility studies via organizational and structural help to permanent quality monitoring.
For these reasons, culture support is less able to be standardized than other forms of state aid. Any independent theatre or music group, cultural institution and individual artist needs highly specific support. Performance and exhibition venues, rehearsal rooms and studios, advertising and financing strategies are hardly ever similar.
The Culture Board / Kulturamt Frankfurt am Main serves around 110 institutional support programmes and annually almost 300 projects with a total financial volume of € 24.5 million, thereof project funds of € 1.2 million.
Support by the Culture Board / Kulturamt Frankfurt am Main is based solely on qualitative criteria. Achieving this and also representing it to the outside calls for permanent exchange of knowledge, acquired not least by own organizational activities. Always being accessible and nonetheless adhering to comprehensible procedures demands a broad range of knowledge and a high degree of communication skills.
Separation according to genres, as they also are shown in the different budget positions, is today only of idealistic help. Overlapping, the cultural crossover and the formation of new forms of culture are increasing constantly.
The Frankfurt Culture Board / Kulturamt Frankfurt am Main is structured according to a departmental model, i.e. the individual divisions are responsible for the preparation of support measure that are ultimately legally executed by the Department Head. Juries and committees are usually dispensed with in order to allow rapid and deadline-free work the entire year, and to secure direct communication between the relevant culture initiatives and the divisional heads. In regular round table sessions officers and the Board Head discuss project plans.