12.09.2025 | Press release by bbk berlin: Without art and culture, there is no diversity. Without diversity, there is no secure democracy!

The visual arts are indispensable for an open society. Anyone who permanently cuts funding and restricts diversity jeopardizes Berlin's cosmopolitanism.

We explicitly reiterate what the action alliance #BerlinIstKultur clearly states in its press release: What is the value of the promises made by the governing authorities?

The Governing Mayor promised that no institution would have to close. However, the English Theatre Berlin, the Fliegende Theater, and the Schlossplatztheater Köpenick are losing their funding and will have to close in 2026 due to insufficient project funding. Studios and workspaces are being lost as commitments are not renewed and leases expire. Does the promise of the Mayor and the Senator not apply to these three theaters and the production sites of visual arts?

Senator Sarah Wedl-Wilson promised minimum fees and only a temporary suspension of the Exhibition Fee Fund for visual artists (FABiK) in 2025. Yet the funds earmarked for minimum fees are being used as savings potential in the 2025 supplementary budget, FABiK is permanently abolished, and responsibility for artists’ fees is effectively being shifted to the districts.

We therefore ask: Will the payment of professional artists in the future again be at discretion, weighed against expenses such as toilet renovations and mediation programs? What a step backward. For almost 10 years, Berlin’s exhibition fees as the “Berliner Modell” were pioneering and an international role model.

As if that were not regression enough, public art is losing over 85% of its budget compared to 2024 due to these cuts. Also, in the area of studio funding through the Arbeitsraumprogramm, the promised creation of new spaces has long been canceled. Instead, cuts to existing rents continue to be applied. The future of many studios is acutely threatened—some of which have been rented since the 1990s!

Hypocritical and cynical

While we scrutinize these figures, Senator Wedl-Wilson speaks solemnly about funding and diversity at the opening of the Berlin Art Week this week in the garden of the Hamburger Bahnhof. Senator Wedl-Wilson, when you say, “The Art Week is important,” you must surely also mean the preservation of visual arts and the support of Berlin’s visual artists. You know the annual income of Berlin’s visual artists. You know what the abolition of exhibition fees and the loss of studios means for artists. What you are now cutting is the very substance of what you have just praised.

Also speaking at the opening, Berlin’s Economic Senator Franziska Giffey emphasized that art and culture are of absolute importance to Berlin. She highlighted that almost half of all visual artists in Germany live in Berlin and stated that they will continue to be supported.

“In my view, this statement is absolutely hypocritical and cynical considering the radical cuts in visual arts,” says Frauke Boggasch, co-spokesperson of bbk berlin. She adds, “By withdrawing the existential foundations for professional (visual) artists working in Berlin, by taking away their studios, funding, and security, we deprive them of the opportunity to continue their profession and fulfill their socially important role: to dare new things, to give voice to often marginalized perspectives, to break stigmas, to make precarious realities visible, to enable intercultural understanding, and to stimulate critical self-reflection.”

The future looks different

Why, at a time when democracy shows signs of weakness, are low-threshold access to art—carefully developed over years and demonstrably having positive social effects—being systematically dismantled?

If the political sphere truly values Berlin’s special international role as an arts and cultural metropolis, as frequently emphasized in speeches, then where is the support for maintaining Berlin’s status as an international center for arts and culture?

Birgit Cauer, co-spokesperson of bbk berlin: “Low-threshold art offerings in Berlin are essential to ensure art remains accessible to all. We need funding so that art does not disappear from the cityscape. Those who cut art, culture, and diversity weaken the democratic foundation and open doors to authoritarian thinking!”

We once again demand the immediate reversal of the budget cuts in the cultural sector!

Frauke Boggasch und Birgit Cauer
Spokespersons bbk berlin