What the 2021-2024 cultural message can achieve

The program of the March meeting of the Parliamentary Group on Music included Explanations on the new Cultural Dispatch 2021-2024. Business as usual, one might have thought. Nevertheless, never before have so many association representatives and members of the National Council and Council of States gathered in the Schmiedstube hall in Bern as this time. It was obvious: there was an elephant in the room - the forced shutdown of the cultural sector due to the coronavirus, which is putting event organizers, freelance musicians, technicians, concert logisticians and ticket providers in financial difficulties. After the presentations by the Federal Office of Culture (FOC) and Pro Helvetia on the cultural strategy for the next four years, there were also emotional votes, with urgent appeals to the councillors to find solutions to limit the devastating economic damage that is looming for the music industry.

Pro Helvetia Director Philippe Bischof felt compelled to remind those present not to confuse the issues. And indeed, there is basically good news to report on national cultural policy. The Federal Council wants to increase spending again. David Vitali, Head of the Culture and Society Section at the BAK, explained where the priorities lie with regard to music.

Firstly, there is the Youth+Music (Y+M) program launched with the last dispatch. Following an encouraging evaluation, the training of Y+M instructors is to be "adjusted in terms of content" and certification integrated into the courses of study for music teachers at music universities. A database will make information on the program and course instructors transparently accessible. Performance and impact measurements are also to be expanded. From 2022, the Confederation also plans to offer its own program for the promotion of talented students, which will allow around 1,000 talented students to be identified each year. The core of the program will be a "music talent card", which will "provide access to suitable (cantonal) support services". However, according to Vitali, the idea of a talent card did not meet with universal approval during the consultation process. For this reason, the federal government, cantons and other stakeholders will now work together to develop a framework concept.

According to Vitali, the federal government is also focusing on music school fees. The goal remains "equitable access to music education for all children and young people". An evaluation carried out here has also shown that the differences in fees for adults and young people vary significantly within the education regions. Around an eighth of music schools have no subsidized tariffs up to upper secondary level, around two thirds have no income-based tariff structure and over half have no extended subsidized offers for gifted students. This situation has hardly changed since 2016, Vitali admitted. The Federal Council's proposals on how to tackle this remain rather vague: it wants to further sensitize music school providers to the issue and re-evaluate them.

Director Philippe Bischof and Head of the Music Department Andri Hardmeier provided information on the near future of the national arts council Pro Helvetia. According to Bischof, the Arts Council wants to work more specifically to ensure that financial support is increasingly linked to fair pay for creative artists. Pro Helvetia would also like to promote equal opportunities between men and women. In addition, efforts are to be made to establish solid statistics on the cultural sector.

Andri Hardmeier explained that the cultural foundation wanted to take account of the fact that art and cultural forms are changing and merging ever more rapidly. Formats that do not correspond to the concept of works previously applied in the music sector are to be better taken into account in future as part of the promotion of works. Hardmeier mentioned, for example, site-specific or collective works, sound installations and sound art or multimedia works. The promotion of music theater is also to be "consolidated and further developed". Pro Helvetia is also concerned with the cross-cantonal and international dissemination of new works.

This is not enough for the Swiss Music Council. As it writes in a statement, it would like to see "the development of longer-term development strategies for the three genres of folk music, contemporary music (pop, rock, jazz, new classical music) and classical music". The German Initiative Musik gGmbH or the European Agenda of Music (EAM) of the European Music Council could serve as a model here. Furthermore, although the Music Council acknowledges that the visibility of Swiss music abroad has been "substantially improved" in some cases, its members perceive music exports as too fragmented and therefore not powerful enough. In order to improve its effectiveness, the music sector believes that exports need to be more coordinated and better funded.