The Berlin Senate has announced budget cuts of 3 billion euros for 2025 and 2 billion euros for 2026. The cultural scene faces cuts of 10 % for 2025, as well as for 2026 and 2027. This would have dramatic consequences for Berlin and its richly diverse cultural landscape. We have joined forces with other Berlin cultural professionals to publicly protest against this.
Please support our cause by signing and sharing this petition from the Deutsche Bühnenverein.
Open letter & petition
The Deutsche Bühnenverein Landesverband Berlin has addressed the Senate with an open letter and a petition: “As an association of opera and concert halls, spoken theater, revue and cabaret in Berlin, we call on the Senate to focus on the social and economic importance of culture in the upcoming discussions on consolidating the overall state budget.”
Berlin’s opera houses and concert halls, orchestras and choirs as well as the Staatsballett also called on Berlin politicians not to implement the planned budget cutbacks in the cultural sector in a joint statement.
The key points:
- The cultural sector accounts for 2.1% of Berlin’s total budget – a small investment that generates maximum reputational benefits for the city of Berlin. Cutbacks in culture – the city’s most important unique selling point – will drastically diminish Berlin’s image.
- Culture is an important economic factor, not only through employment creation in the creative industries but also as an attractive aspect of tourism: studies have shown that more than half of Berlin’s visitors come to the city because of its cultural and artistic attractions. Cutbacks in culture would cause a severe negative impact in these areas, and would result in a massive loss of revenue for the entire city of Berlin.
- Cuts would also threaten the livelihoods of many independent artists, groups and theatres that have helped to shape the cultural life of this city in a way that is unique in the world, and without whose participation major productions in concert halls and opera houses could not be realised.
- The cultural professionals in this city stand together in solidarity to call for a decisive end to plans for cuts in the cultural sector as a whole, and have no desire to be forced into competition with each other over the distribution of funding.
Day of action on 16 October 2024
On 16 October, artists, cultural institutions and organizations from Berlin will be holding various campaigns to draw attention to the impending cuts and the associated consequences.