Désirée Meiser honored with the Basel Culture Prize
This year's Basel Culture Prize goes to actress and director Désirée Meiser. The Okra Collective, which campaigns for non-discriminatory club culture, receives the sponsorship award.
With the prize, which is endowed with 20,000 francs, the Basel government council is honoring the commitment of the co-founder and long-standing artistic director of the Gare du Nord, the station for new music in the former buffet rooms of the Badischer Bahnhof in Basel. Meiser came to Basel in 1988 as a young actress and member of the Basel Theater ensemble. After her acting career, she co-founded the Gare du Nord in 2002. Since then, the station for new music has developed into a renowned meeting place for the contemporary music scene from Switzerland and abroad.
The Basel Culture Promotion Prize is intended to send out a publicly visible cultural policy signal for young cultural initiatives. This year, the jury decided to award the 10,000 Swiss franc prize to the Basel Okra Collective. The group, consisting of Jean Foncé, Joy Asumadu, Anouchka Enziga, Glenn Asumadu, Tidiane Sane, Mirco Joao-Pedro, Imani Fux, Abdulmalik Abdi and Katie Omole, creates party places where discrimination has no place.
