Cultural institutions, events and projects are also financed by private households, the business community, foundations and other private non-profit organisations, in some areas to a considerable extent. Reliable statistics on private cultural funding are unfortunately not available in Germany. In its Kulturfinanzbe-richt 2018, the Federal Statistical Office provides an estimate for a small section of private cultural financing, namely private expenditure on publicly subsidised cultural institutions in 2015, which amounted to 1.2 billion EUR, or 15.11 EUR per capita. In addition, public and private cultural institutions generate income through patronage and sponsorship. They also benefit from voluntary civil society commitment, the value of which cannot be quantified. Furthermore, this estimate does not take into account cultural institutions that are financed entirely by private means (e.g. musical theatres, rock concerts, circuses and other cultural industry enterprises).
The study Unternehmerische Kulturförderung, published in autumn 2019 by the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft in the BDI, offers an insight into corporate cultural promotion in Germany. The study, which is based on a survey of companies, nevertheless provides insights into the motivation for promoting culture, the cultural sectors supported, models and forms of cultural promotion and promotional instruments – although it also states that there is still no reliable database on the total amount of private expenditure on the promotion of art and culture in Germany.[1]
Only a few of the funding actors report their
data, such as the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung, a cultural foundation and a
joint venture of all member savings banks of the East German Savings Banks
Association (of the federal states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western
Pomerania, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt). It promotes and initiates cultural
projects in urban and especially rural areas.
[1] Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI (Hrsg.) / Siebenhaar, Klaus / Müller, Achim (2019): Unternehmerische Kulturförderung in Deutschland, Berlin: Self-published.
Comments are closed.