The funding program 360° Fund for New City Cultures by the German Federal Cultural Foundation aims to encourage cultural institutions to address the cultural diversity of their cities in their programs, personnel decisions and target audiences.
The reason for the program is the fact that the managerial staff and the visitors of cultural institutions do not correspond to the proportion of the general population in Germany which has an immigrant background. The program addresses institutions in the areas of the fine and performing arts, music, literature, architecture, New Media and related forms, as well as cross-genre institutions, cultural- and art-historical museums, which address contemporary issues in their related field.
The 360° Fund for New City Cultures supports a broad range of approaches, strategies and methods which demonstrate in an exemplary manner how institutions can effectively participate in shaping urban society in the future in terms of thematic focus and staff appointments. The financial support is directed to the positions at the cultural institutions (a so-called “agent”) who will develop recommendations and measures which can be implemented in order to diversify their activities as well as contribute to shaping a self-confident, immigrant-friendly society, by which all of urban society can benefit.
The Federal Cultural Foundation has also published the Diversity Compass. How can cultural institutions become more diverse? Insights from the 360° program, a presentation of participants’ experience and most effective measures. The publication also provides this aggregated expertise for the benefit of the cultural sector at large. In the final chapter, the evaluation agency Syspons reviews the impact of the programme based on the examples of four funded institutions
