Culture

The Brexit threat to the culture

Long radio silence for the impending EU withdrawal of the British. Now, the “Brexit” appears also in the minds of cultural workers arrive. For you, a lot is at stake.

Final hurt make doing both, with the conclusion made, as well as the conclusion maker. The young viewers learn from “ichmagdich just nichtmehrso”. The piece had last week
“Theater Junge Generation” (tjg) in Dresden Premerie. The message: be Who wants to terminate a relationship, it via SMS or in Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp, you should set the right tone. This applies to a youth theatre, working with other theatres in Europe and money from the European Union. This also applies to the big political stage.

The culture is impoverished exchange with the United Kingdom? Drying up of EU funds for theatre, Film and art projects? A cultural rupture with the continent, it is even threatened, if the UK leaves the EU? Afraid of the questions, which left nearly 300 British artists recently to the spring to grab the goods. In an open letter that appeared on the front page of the London newspaper “The Guardian”, calling the EU the fate of their country. A Brexit hazardous to the global success of British culture and pushing her to the sidelines, afraid of the signatories, including celebrities such as Director Steve McQueen, writer John le Carré and Ian McEwan, the architect David Chipperfield, the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, or even the artist Anish Kappor.

Map voting for the EU Referendum in the UK

Their advance has not remained unchallenged. “Ridiculous”, calling him the Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins. The Bulk of the film people work, finally, in Hollywood and outside of the EU. Your letter was headed “economic interests”. What is by no means far-fetched: John Sorrell of the non-governmental Association “Creative Industries Federation” (CIF) is calculated, the achievements of the creators of culture are important for the Image of Britain in the world. But above all, they contribute 84,1 billion pounds to the British economy. Europe is, of a CIF according to the study, the UK’s largest export market in the field of culture. And yet the British Brexit-debate is only part of the economy of culture, including art, trade, and television market.

It’s a lot of money

It’s a lot of money, also for the cross-border culture. With 1.46 billion euros, Brussels promotes international cultural and film projects in the community alone between 2014 and 2020. The EU programme “Creative Europe” is, as a consultant Katharina Weinert from the “Creative Europe Desk culture” explains in Bonn, Europe’s culture funding pot. Add to this the billions in structural aid. Of the EU funds, the youth theatre project “Platform Shift Plus” the Dresden “theatre of the Young Generation” is involved, together with British, Norwegian, Italian and other European stages, benefits for example. Whether a Brexit to the stop of ongoing projects with British participation, would this lead to? No, it is, at least in Dresden. However, the EU will discuss the Commission in the event of a Brexit.

Eckart Köhne, President German museums Association

Nicholas Kenyon, Managing Director of the Barbican cultural centre in London, refers in the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” on the financial consequences of a Brexit. In 2008 Liverpool was the European capital of culture in the enjoyment of EU funds, he says. Many well-known films, including “The King’s Speech”, “The Iron Lady” and “Slumdog Millionaire” would not have been possible without money from the mainland is conceivable. A number of EU Funding going to close, warns Kenyon.

Signal against the culture?

With concern Eckart Köhne, President of the looks now
German museums Association, the threat of a Brexit. “The cooperation across borders has always been a major concern for culture and the arts,” he says in a DW interview, “if you restrict the now, is not good at all.” But above all, the Brexit would be “a Signal against the culture”. Culture of working long global and cross-border. To say goodbye to this idea, would be a retrograde step and take care not to culture. For German museums would make it more difficult to get EU funding for cooperation projects, fears Köhne. Due to stricter customs regulations, he expects the restrictions on the interlibrary loan system between the exhibition halls.

Martin Roth, head of the London’s Victoria & Albert Museum

In addition to Hartwig Fischer, the head of the British Museum, says Martin Roth, the German at the head of a venerable British Institution –
Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He holds the Brexit a terrible idea. “For me, Europe was always hope for a better and peaceful future, with Sharing, solidarity, and tolerance,” says Roth. An exit mean foreclosure. “Alone, that we need to talk about a Brexit,” he says in a DW interview, was a “disaster”. Although the UK will remain part of the European culture, identity, and culture. However, the policy will make it difficult. “This tension between culture and politics Worries me.” In the long term, Brexit will make the world of culture hart, believes the Museum Manager. Many Brexit advocates not bedächten the consequences: “What are we talking about? Of Taxes, Customs Duties, Visa? Or of work permits for British artists in other countries? You have to leave from Berlin, if you live there as an English artist?”, Roth asks.

Scene from #ichmagdich just nichtmehrso at the Theater Junge Generation in Dresden

Brexit-the dispute asks for identity

The UK was an “absolutely open country,” says Roth. This openness was hardly threatened. “I’m worried more about what will change in terms of content, such as the identity in the country!” In fact, the crucial question of British identity in the Brexit debate: “Is the roof for a multi-cultural society”, recently asked the Swiss historian and Journalist Martin Alioth, a connoisseur of the UK, “so for the indigenous identities of the English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish as well as Pakistani, Caribbean, Indian and-more recently-Polish influences?”

Brexit supporters before floating an Alternative to the European cultural exchange, observed Alioth. This is insular and global, at the same time, on the one hand, self-sufficient and having regard to the English-British self-image. On the other hand, is global, because you understand yourself as a part of the Anglophone world, from Vancouver to Cape town to Sidney and Delhi. “Because it does not need the European continent, the beaches you like, but the culture is the least familiar,” says the Swiss in the Swiss Radio and television (SRF). British culture is going to be successfully exported, mainly to pop music, and fiction.

The world had to rely on the inter-cultural exchange, says Norbert Seidel from Dresden Theater Junge Generation, dedicated to the – rare – contemporary drama for young people. “Without EU Financing our project would be dead!”. Only now, he noticed, as is currently the Dresden staging. Because at the end of the make a phone, it is like the Brexit: With a quickly typed “It’s over” is not the relationship usually continues for a long time. The British vote on may 23. June on the EU’s whereabouts.