“I’ve always wanted to make art possible”

Christina, you’ve been with the Fonds for 10 years. Was there a moment during that time when you realized this is where you belong?

I knew that right from the start. I’ve always wanted to make art possible and work at an institution that provides artists with financial room for maneuver. That’s part of the job as a cultural funder. With Neustart Kultur, the significance of my role certainly increased when we had to act quickly to support artists.

What was it like working at the Fonds during the COVID-19 pandemic: exciting or overwhelming?

It was exciting. I think we all constantly look back at that time. Not only because of the wealth of experience we gained during that period in terms of designing and implementing these large-scale packages of measures, but also because of the reimplementation of business, operational and funding processes during that period. These processes are still proving their worth today, though we naturally reflect on and evaluate them regularly. After the pandemic, we had to adapt our work processes and adopt new routines – which required management to address and facilitate these changes. At the time, we were also able to seize the unique opportunity to consider what developments we could initiate with these funds and how we could reposition ourselves as the Fonds – within the scene, as a cultural policy actor and as a partner to artists. And overall, that was a task that presented us, as a young team, with a positive challenge. It was a very fulfilling time, exciting and overwhelming all at once.

And all of that working from home at your kitchen tables!

Even on the weekends, of course. As team leaders, there were no set office hours at that time. But we were able to rethink and reevaluate a great deal. And that was a major advantage.

Do you actually feel a sense of frustration when you see how drastically the funding was suddenly cut back after Neustart Kultur?

Holger Bergmann has always spoken of things being on the brink of collapse, and that reality persisted even after Neustart Kultur ended. Since then, we can only speak of a rough stabilization of annual funding and are not where we see the annual need for the entire scene. As the Fonds, we repeatedly mention the 16 million euros that the scene would need within the context of a sensible structuring and systematization of funding. It’s sometimes frustrating because we see the needs and, at the same time, the tight and increasingly strained budgets of municipalities and states, yet we remain stuck in protracted processes.

Has the Fonds’ role changed even beyond the COVID-19 funding programs?

From a purely financial perspective, before the Neustart program, with a budget of two million euros, we were a funding body with a small budget. During Neustart, we became a sudden source of funding for many artists who had previously received little or no support. Thanks to the funding architecture established during Neustart, we now have more funding instruments at our disposal, such as residency grants, and are thereby meeting important needs for a larger part of the scene.

Why is this so important?

Residencies enable open-ended work that may sometimes come to nothing and perhaps even ends in failure. I believe it’s important that art does not necessarily have to lead to something: that it’s free, even when it comes to its outcome. In traditional funding legislation, open-endedness is difficult, which of course I’m aware of as an administrative director. It takes strong arguments to fully utilize the discretionary leeway. And this is precisely the Fonds’ soft power: a solid understanding of administrative requirements, but also of the needs within the arts. This allows us to exercise discretion in the right places during every funding round.

During the COVID-19 crisis, there was a significant learning process within cultural policy regarding which individuals and groups actually exist and which of them need support. Will these insights remain, or will they be forgotten again?

They won’t be forgotten in the relevant department at the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), with whom we work closely. It’s more likely to happen among cultural and budget policymakers, because there’s staff turnover with each new legislative term. This means we keep having to explain the independent arts scene again and again: Who is it? What does it need? That’s why there must be better and more sustainable visibility of the needs and actors involved, so that we don’t have to keep explaining everything about the scene. Especially since every actor explains themselves differently to policymakers. The Fonds aims to be a platform that listens and negotiates how the scene sees itself today and, ideally, how it should be structured and systematized to be perceived as relevant in the cultural landscape. We’re working on these processes.

Why do you advocate for the independent arts scene professionally?

Actually, I originally had different interests. Sport was and is my passion. In school, I took advanced courses in biology and chemistry. Why art? Because I see art as a cosmopolitan platform for framing and anchoring many social debates in civil society in a different way to how they’re presented in politics or the media.

How did you end up working at the Fonds?

I studied law and theater studies at the same time, had a student job at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt for a long time and then starting working at the Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste (BFDK) in 2015. I worked there as a production assistant for the Bundeskongress. When that came to an end, I heard that the Fonds Darstellende Künste was restructuring and that Holger Bergmann needed support.

How much do you actually have to do with art in your day-to-day professional life?

Today, my team and I are revising the application and funding requirements through constant cycles of reflection and updating, drawing on our practical experience. It’s important to us to spare artists the formal and time-consuming application and accountability procedures only where necessary, in order to allow them artistic and intellectual freedom. We increasingly rely on digital and, perhaps in the future, more AI-supported processes for this. This has little to do with art; it’s more about enabling art. In addition, since I became deputy managing director and we’ve specialized our business processes and delegated them to more people, I’ve become even further removed in my daily work from what’s happening at the production sites. When I started working with Holger Bergmann in 2016, I had far more direct contact with production managers and artists through my involvement in the funded projects.

What’s the core of your daily work?

Essentially, the Fonds is an administrative body, and my task is to properly manage the necessary administrative procedures or at least oversee the processes. This applies in particular to the areas of finance and the entire complex of funding procedures. To this end, I’m in daily communication with the BKM, the Federal Office of Administration (BVA), tax and legal advisors and the key players in the scene’s networks.

Looking back at your 10 years at the Fonds, is there a milestone you remember where you’d say, “That’s when we changed the world”?

No, we didn’t change the world. We just did our job. However, one moment I’ll never forget was when we were sitting here with Mr. Eifler, who was the head of the relevant department at the BKM at the time. And he asked me: “Mrs. Roth, do you think you can pull this off again?” He was referring to the 88 million euros we were supposed to receive for #TakeHeart as part of the second round of the Neustart program. And I replied: “Yes, of course, Mr. Eifler, we can do it.” Perhaps that moment is so vivid in my mind because I knew right away that we could pull this off as a team. We simply have an incredibly strong team. That’s why I can’t single out just one moment. Instead, there have been, and continue to be, team experiences where we sat together in the office and were, and still are, happy about what we’ve been able to achieve despite our limited number of staff.