SPD on culture and media

After the budget cuts, the SPD wants to give cultural institutions planning certainty again and preserve the full range of cultural infrastructure. Culture should be easy to access, for example by bringing back the free-admission Museum Sunday. The federal government is to take on a larger share of responsibility for culture in Berlin.

The SPD wants to keep theaters, museums, clubs, and other cultural places. They should be able to plan safely again. Culture should cost little or nothing. Museum Sunday with free entry should come back.

The platform lists studios, project spaces, clubs, venues, libraries, music schools, municipal galleries, and youth art schools in all districts as infrastructure to be secured. The capital city financing agreement is to be developed further so the federal government shares more responsibility. Accessible cultural offerings would be funded. The Hauptstadtkulturfonds (capital cultural fund) would get new priorities such as teaching democracy and artistic research, film funding would be reliably resourced, and cultural institutions would get support with digitalization.

The SPD wants to improve working conditions in the cultural sector. It advocates collectively agreed wages, binding minimum fees, and appropriate exhibition fees. Funding is to be multi-year, approved early, and transparent.

People who work in culture should be paid fairly. The SPD wants minimum fees. That is the lowest amount an artist must be paid. Funding should be promised for several years.

Rising wages and costs are to be realistically factored into funding. Funding structures should enable quality, continuity, and diversity rather than, in the party's view, entrenching precarious conditions. The independent scene, amateurs, and professional artists are to be better connected with state cultural institutions. The SPD wants to strengthen studios, rehearsal rooms, theaters, and museums as places of production and presentation.

The SPD wants to secure libraries permanently through a state law and develop them as neighborhood meeting places. A cultural funding law and an urban development plan for culture are to anchor culture in city planning. District-level offerings such as music schools and adult education centers are to grow.

The SPD wants a law for libraries. It should secure their money. Another law should support culture. New neighborhoods should get places for culture from the start.

The library law is to lay down funding, standards, and public ownership. The Central and Regional Library (ZLB) should no longer be split across two sites. The SPD wants to expand music schools, youth art schools, municipal galleries, and adult education centers, especially in outer districts and disadvantaged neighborhoods. State-owned properties are to be used more for culture, and rooms are to be provided free of charge as in sports. The plans also include preserving industrial heritage, legal graffiti spaces, and urban art competitions.

The SPD wants to give Berlin's memorial sites more money and staff. It regards the critical examination of National Socialism and the SED dictatorship as a fixed part of democratic culture. Projects on East German experiences and life stories are to be funded.

The SPD wants to give memorial sites in Berlin more money and staff. These places recall the Nazi era and the East German dictatorship. The experiences of people from East Germany should also be made visible.

The Campus for Democracy on the grounds of the former Stasi headquarters is to become an open place for civic education, research, and culture. A new exhibition is to show opposition and resistance in East Germany. Also planned is a permanent exhibition on political violence, especially far-right and racist violence, in East Berlin and East Germany. The memorial sites' educational work is to use contemporary formats and relate to the present.

The SPD wants to permanently anchor the citywide concept "Kolonialismus erinnern" (Remembering Colonialism) and implement its recommendations step by step. A central site of remembrance and learning is to be created. Streets that commemorate colonial criminals are to be renamed.

Germany once had colonies. The SPD wants Berlin to remember this. There will be a central place for remembering and learning. Streets named after colonial criminals will get new names.

Alongside the central site, decentralized places of remembrance are to be developed further. The work is to be done together with BIPoC communities, descendants of colonized societies, and civil society. The platform names a just and globally connected politics of remembrance as the goal.

The SPD stands by public broadcasting and its funding. The Berlin-Brandenburg media authority is to receive secure long-term funding. Local journalism is to be supported so that neighborhoods keep an informed public.

The SPD wants to keep public TV and radio. Their funding should be safe too. The media watchdog for Berlin and Brandenburg should get enough money. Local news should get support.

The platform calls free and diverse media a pillar of democracy. The state media authority is to provide oversight independent of the government, protect media diversity, and teach digital skills, from social media to AI applications. In the SPD's view, it needs permanently reliable funding for this.