Cultural mission statement 2020-2023 of the city of Zurich
The Zurich City Council has set the priorities for cultural funding over the next four years. There are to be more affordable rehearsal rooms for musicians. The Tonhalle Gesellschaft Zürich is to be transformed into a non-profit public limited company.
The City of Zurich has set four cultural policy priorities for the years 2020 to 2023: It wants to improve framework conditions, make cultural funding more flexible and test new forms of funding, strengthen the overall view in funding and improve cultural participation.
For example, the city wants to provide more affordable rehearsal rooms for musicians. Individual institutions are to receive higher contributions so that they can continue to fulfill their mission in the future. In order to gain greater scope for attracting private funding, the Tonhalle Gesellschaft Zürich is to be transformed into a non-profit public limited company.
According to the city's press release, cultural promotion also wants to be able to react more quickly and flexibly to new developments. Flexible and contemporary funding instruments should "stimulate innovative, creative thinking and action". Cultural promotion must also review its funding instruments, processes and criteria. This will take place in the next mission statement period with the participation of young artists in a process with an experimental and laboratory-like character. The aim is to test new forms of funding quickly and easily.
The City of Zurich wants to strengthen the overall view of the funding landscape. Institutional and project-related funding are combined and complement each other. The "Dance and Theater Landscape Zurich" project, which the culture department carried out in 2017/18 with the broad involvement of stakeholders, is a model for this. As a result of the project, the City Council intends to introduce a new funding system for dance and theater in the 2020-2023 period. At its heart is concept funding, which will be used to award grants with different durations. This will give new initiatives better opportunities and strengthen the independent dance and theater scene.
The focus on "Strengthening participation, living diversity" from the last mission statement period 2016-2019 will be continued: cultural offerings in Zurich should appeal to as many different groups in society as possible. Among other things, greater promotion of cultural initiatives in the outer districts is planned.
The municipal council will decide on many of the planned measures, and in some cases a municipal vote will be required.
Photo: Austin Neill / Unsplash
