7. Perspective and Dates

Funding deadlines 2025Dates 2025

Perspectives

Next year, the Fonds will have been active for the independent performing arts for exactly 40 years. Many people have accompanied this successful development and made it possible.
The Fonds has been significantly shaped by its committed member associations and expert members of the Board of Trustees, the board of directors as well as those responsible for the business operations. We would like to thank them all for the continued development of this work, which I was also allowed to take on in 2016 and now have helped shape for the past nine years. Together we would like to celebrate this 40th birthday in the context of the film premiere of "THE ART OF STAYING MANY“:
In the "THE ART OF STAYING MANY” series, the Fonds focused on the degree of polarization of our society. Director Felix Meyer-Christian and his team accompanied the forums on commission by the Fonds. Their film is a collage of diverse voices from art, politics and activism with snapshots from the regions and currently relevant artistic works in a close proximity to the audience. An analysis of the social-political question: What role do the arts play currently – and what will this role be in the future?
On May 22nd 2025, the Fonds will have its general assembly in Chemnitz, flanked by a discourse event with lectures and panels on the previous evening in cooperation with the European Cultural Capital Chemnitz 2025 and radio3 - der zweite Gedanke

New challenges in cultural funding in 2005 and beyond

It is already becoming apparent this year that federal funding will decrease and that austerity policies will also be introduced in many municipalities and federal states. Together with an increasing approval for authoritarian and populist parties, this is a major democratic challenge that will have a massive affect on the contemporary arts as well. A social climate is emerging in which the arts have to act among increasing polarization and cultural regression. In 2025, the Fonds will consider funding offers that in their breadth can force the effect of stabilization as well as extraordinary aesthetic shifts. The goal in federal policy, which should continue to be pursued by the member associations, remains a needs-oriented funding by the federal government.
At a level of 16.5 million EUR, determined jointly with the federal states, federal funding would be able to stabilize the nationwide, independent, professional artists in the fields of performance, dance, theater, street theater and puppet theater with their artistic works between stages, urban or digital spaces for diverse audiences. Let us all commit to strong funding in this field.

Holger Bergmann

Managing director, Fonds Darstellende Künste

Board Meetings

• 31.01.2025
• 12.03.2025
• May 2025
• September 2025
• December 2025

Events and Discourse

• 12.03.2025 | Film premiere of “The Art of Staying Many” | Sophiensaele Berlin
• 21/22.05.2025 | The Art of Staying Many - Forum for Art, Freedom and Democracy: Germany and Europe | Chemnitz
• Fall 2025 | Federal Meeting of the Independent Performing Arts (Bundestreffen) | Berlin 

Tabori Prize and Theaterpreis des Bundes

Due to the early federal elections and the associated change of government, it was not yet clear at the time of going to press when the Federal Theater Prize, and with it the Tabori Prize, could be awarded in 2025.

Previous Chapter: 6. Business Plan Back to Overview