The measures taken in the course of the COVID19 pandemic affect all parts of society, but not all equally: In the field of performing arts, freelance artists, production managers and art mediators are existentially threatened by the crisis – much more so than large institutions and their permanent staff.
ID_Frankfurt (Independent Dance and Performance e.V.) is a non-profit association that has been working since 2009 to improve the working situation of freelance artists, theorists and mediators in choreography and performance. Many of our members work beyond their artistic activities in cultural education projects. They are affected not only by cancelled rehearsals and events, but also by school closures and suspended workshops in educational and cultural institutions.
Unfortunately, we note that the emergency aid measures of the Hessian state government for freelance artists and art mediators are not effective and therefore demand emphatically and immediately an adjustment of the measures that does justice to the working realities of artists and art mediators. The emergency aid programs in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bremen and Berlin, which provide non-repayable subsidies (e.g. for loss of fees) in an unbureaucratic manner, are exemplary in this regard.
Contrary to the aid promised by Angela Dorn (Hessian State Minister for Science and the Arts), the measures adopted in Hesse primarily cover ongoing operating costs for smaller companies. They are intended to compensate for liquidity bottlenecks, such as salaries of employees, ongoing rents of (non-private) premises, maintenance costs and other ancillary operating costs. The majority of artists and art educators in the independent performing arts, however, work as solo self-employed or in the organization of a GbR. In addition to rehearsal processes and performances, the daily work routine takes place in a home office anyway. Existentially, the independent dance and performance scene is currently being hit by fee losses, which have resulted in large sums due to concrete cancellations of performances and events at the present time and will also result in the long term due to postponements of events. By summer alone, the independent scene in Hesse will have to reckon with fee losses of up to 3.8 million euros, as a survey by the state association laPROF shows.
We expressly welcome the fact that the Frankfurt Cultural Office is setting up an emergency fund that will initially provide a repayable grant of between 500 and a maximum of 5,000 euros. At the same time, we demand that the repayment be cancelled retroactively in the case of verifiable fee losses – a regulation that is practiced in NRW and Berlin, for example, because repayments in the form of a loan in particular can represent a serious burden in the precarious working conditions of artists*.