Cities/Money/Cultural Education. Horizon 2016

The organization, financing and management of cultural education services and institutions in Germany is extraordinarily heterogeneous. Responsibilities for public funding are distributed not only across the federal levels, but also across various departments at the federal, state and local levels. In addition, other agencies of the indirect state administration, but also cultural and social associations (...) are sometimes involved in the processing of funding. In addition, foundations, funding associations and public (...) or private companies often contribute to financing at the local and national level. In extracurricular cultural education, part of the costs of the program is usually covered by participation fees.

Financing and the associated control of the use of funds are the central foundations for a systematic, coordinated and targeted control (...) of cultural education. The diversity of funding sources and the widespread use of mixed funding therefore leads directly to the question of how and to what extent targeted control and planning of cultural education is implemented in practice.

The aim of the survey of the 200 direct member cities of the German Association of Cities was to gain meaningful and reliable insights into the main types of funding and management practices in the field of cultural education.
A total of 104 member cities of the German Association of Cities took part in the survey, in which a total of around 22 million citizens lives. The study focused on the municipalities as the main organizers and financiers of cultural education. Accordingly, the key questions were how cultural education is organized and coordinated in the cities, to what extent concepts and networking open up additional scope for funding, what contribution different sources of funding make, and what developments are expected with regard to the budget for cultural education.

The survey was conducted as a standardized online survey. The questionnaire comprised 25 questions. There were open response options for 12 questions. Due to the lack of budget items in many places with information on specific expenditures for Arts Education, as well as the lack of key figures and indicators in the municipal budgets, staged questions (to obtain ranking data) were asked about the situation and development of the budget for Arts Education. The same applied to questions about the organization and coordination as well as the evaluation of (municipally funded) cultural education offerings. The responsible departments were able to answer the survey questions between the end of June and mid-August 2016.