“Hope for cultural strategy has burst”

The current government started to develop an arts and culture strategy. “This mandate is anchored in the government program. Anyone who expected the formulation of cultural policy objectives, guidelines for action and measures to achieve these objectives was bitterly disappointed at the ‘Forum Kultur’ event that took place today,” said Yvonne Gimpel, Managing Director of the IG Culture Austria, the debate day on Tuesday in the Viennese Volkstheater. Instead of a cultural strategy, Minister of Culture Werner Kogler and State Secretary Andrea Mayer (both Greens) presented a collection of topics.

As a keynote speaker, pianist Igor Levit wanted to “encourage” in a time marked by the pandemic and the Ukraine war and made a plea for art as a space of hope, togetherness and community. And yet he asked a few questions: Why are music lessons being cut more and more? Why did so many artists live in the precariat? Why is the culture talking about subsidies and not about investments? Why is the abolition of the RSO being seriously discussed?

There were no answers. Instead, it was about the freedom of culture, which must be secured more than ever. “I too believe that culture can do everything and doesn’t have to do anything,” said Levit, “but that’s not our reality and never will be.”

Gimpel: “It was about a strategy that will also be implemented. In a year and a half there will be an election. The fact that nothing has been done to this day makes hope for a participatory cultural strategy dwindling.”