"Culture is for everyone". Art Minister Dorn emphasizes this. A new master plan should help to achieve this goal. Findings from the corona pandemic have also been incorporated.
Wiesbaden (dpa/lhe) - Art and culture should be more accessible to everyone in Hesse. This is a central concern of the new master plan for culture, said Art Minister Angela Dorn (Greens) on Tuesday in her government statement in the state parliament in Wiesbaden. "Culture is for everyone." Dorn explained that it shouldn't make any difference whether someone lives in the country or in the city, whether they are young or old, or how much money they have at their disposal.
A planned institute for cultural education, for example, should help schools, independent organizations and science to work more closely together. A new pool for artists should make it easier for teachers and educators to develop art and cultural offerings at school or in kindergarten.
The master plan for culture is the first cultural development plan in a federal state that "decidedly bundles the lessons learned from the corona pandemic and the current issues of cultural policy," said Dorn. Numerous cultural workers, but also those interested in culture, participated in the paper. Among other things, the plan also addresses the question of how cultural institutions could become more crisis-proof - for example through cooperation.
The minister cited the Ajoki cultural center in Hanau as a shining example. In Corona times, culture, gastronomy, educational initiatives and the Protestant church came together as partners.
Dorn explained that the master plan is also about the representation of minorities and their participation. Museums and memorials should be able to process their content digitally in such a way that people with disabilities, for example, can also see it. The state wants to support institutions in providing information in simple language so that people with cognitive disabilities or little knowledge of German can also take advantage of cultural offers, as the Ministry of Art announced.
In order to better process looted art that was stolen from those persecuted by the Nazi regime or acquired unlawfully in the colonial context, the state wants to strengthen provenance advice for state and non-state museums with additional money.
Dorn announced that the dialogue with cultural workers should be continued. This could happen, for example, in a cultural advisory board. She also announced that Hessen would like to publish a new funding guideline in a few weeks. The state's financial support for culture should become simpler and less bureaucratic.
So that further initial projects can be tackled soon, the state is providing an additional 6.7 million euros in the double budget for the years 2023 and 2024, said Dorn.
The parliamentary director of the SPD parliamentary group, Daniela Sommer, said that the master plan contained "many positive approaches", but also "a lot of prose". It should go without saying that everyone should have access to culture, no matter how much money they have or where they live. "For my party, at least, this has been a matter of course since it was founded," Sommer explained.
