Cologne has one of the liveliest and most innovative cultural scenes in the country. Artistic innovation and relevant debates come above all from the independent scene. However, their diversity is seriously jeopardised by the draft double budget for 2025/2026. Funding for the independent scene is to be cut by more than 20%.
Music in Cologne has been hit particularly hard: by 2026, the independent music scene will have to make do with almost 27% less than in the current budget. And this despite the fact that the independent music scene urgently needs an increase in funding: according to estimates by the Initiative Freie Musik (IFM), around €2.8 million more than in the current draft budget would be needed to preserve and strengthen the diversity of the scene with its ensembles, festivals and structures, to establish minimum fees without compromising the diversity of the scene, to guarantee planning security for the performers through multi-year funding and thus to implement the new music funding concept that the independent music scene has developed in cooperation with the cultural administration. We would even need €3.6 million more if we wanted to compensate for inflation: because inflation without compensation is tantamount to a further cut for the independent scene.
The cuts are damaging both Cologne’s innovativeness and its rich musical and cultural heritage: for over 100 years, the Cologne Society for New Music has made a major contribution to Cologne being perceived internationally as a centre for new music through concerts, discourse formats and workshops, and is an important network for Cologne composers. International visibility is also offered by the festival for contemporary music, ACHT BRÜCKEN, at which Cologne composers reach a large audience every year as part of ON@ACHT BRÜCKEN. Both KGNM and ACHT BRÜCKEN are now on the verge of being cancelled.
The same applies to other Cologne festivals. Since ORBIT (formerly SPARK), Cologne has once again become synonymous with music theatre: the festival has not only become a new, indispensable platform for the music theatre scene, which is still homeless in Cologne, but also promotes outstanding artistic innovations that expand disciplinary understandings. However, if the draft budget is approved by the city council, there future of the festival will be uncertain.
We are already receiving regular research enquiries from all over the world regarding the reopening of the Studio for Electronic Music. The legacy of the WDR studio, which attracted composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and John Cage in the 1960s and 1970s, is to be turned into a new production centre with international appeal. There is already huge interest, but with the cancellation of funding next year, important archiving and inventory work cannot be carried out.
The funds for the Initiative Freie Musik are also to be halved in the coming budget. In view of the cuts, the value of a strong lobby for the independent scene cannot be overestimated. The administration is thus weakening the central representation for independent music. The resulting loss of the “Kleinstförderung” funding program for the IFM will in turn affect the scene itself.
ON Cologne has been working with some of these players for many years, others we have supported. These examples, as well as the other festivals and networks concerned, are tested structures, hubs of regional knowledge and international expertise and catalysts for the independent scene. The fact that the Cologne city administration does not recognise the value of these structures and at the same time creates no scope for new impulses leaves us with a lack of understanding and contradicts the premises of our work as a network office: The cancellations are a disaster not only for the affected actors themselves, but for the entire Cologne cultural scene. Neither artists nor the networks and spaces around them work on their own. Our work is created, develops and becomes relevant through exchange with others. That’s why the cuts outside our own sectors will make us all poorer.
The diversity of Cologne as a city of music is at stake. The working conditions for freelance musicians and composers are already precarious: Funding programmes at state and federal level are shrinking and, as a result, ever-increasing amounts of third-party funding have to be raised. Short-term funding makes longer-term planning more difficult, and late funding decisions are increasingly causing plans to be cancelled. It is true that artists achieve a lot with little funding: with currently only 5% of the cultural budget, the independent scene accounts for 60-80% of the city’s cultural offerings. But with the new draft budget, a limit has been crossed. If we offer the freelance musicians in Cologne nothing, we will lose them. And with it a large part of what makes our city so liveable.
The current budget crisis affects us all and culture will also have to play its part. Sustainable austerity policy is measured by whether it enables agency now and in the future. However, the opposite is the case when structures are cancelled, cuts are made primarily on the shoulders of the independent scene and artists are left to precariousness. This will cause lasting damage to the attractiveness of Cologne’s cultural life – both from the point of view of cultural professionals as well as Cologne’s citizens and tourists, who value Cologne for its diverse cultural life. We therefore appeal to the parliamentary groups: don’t leave the independent scene out in the cold, preserve structures that we will still need and support those who shape Cologne!