BSW head Sabine Zimmermann is calling for a reform of the Cultural Areas Act for the Free State of Bavaria. "So that theaters and orchestras, but also museums, libraries and socio-cultural centers are preserved and financed on a permanent basis," she told the German Press Agency. The previous law, which had ensured the existence of cultural institutions in rural areas for 30 years, no longer worked.
Personnel and material costs increase, subsidies do not
Zimmermann recalled that the financing of cultural institutions through mandatory levies from the districts and allocations from the state has always had a fundamental problem: "The funding amounts were fixed, while the personnel and material costs of the institutions increased every year." Theaters and orchestras in particular had been "tortured to death" with demands for savings. Almost all of them had to conclude in-house collective agreements that significantly reduced the income of their employees.
