Europe looks at cultural strategy h2>
“The world has changed, culture is now everywhere – in education, in infrastructure, in health care,” emphasized Susanna Tommila and recommended that the city of Chemnitz take this into account when drawing up its cultural strategy for the years 2018 to 2030.

Tommila visited Chemnitz from 19 to 21 April and, together with four other international experts, gained an impression of the city of Chemnitz and current developments in the cultural sector in order to make recommendations for future developments.

Tommila, like the other experts, was able to draw on a broad background of experience in cultural development. She is Cultural Director of the City of Espoo in Finland and also Vice-Chairwoman of the Cultural Forum in the European city network EUROCITIES.

Besides Tommila, Val Birchall, Deputy Director of the Cultural Department of the City of Birmingham (England), Péter Inkei from the Budapest Observatory (Hungary) and Nils Scheffler, expert for integrated urban development from Berlin, were also guests in Chemnitz as members of the expert team.

On behalf of the European Commission, they carried out a so-called coaching, i.e. consulting, within the framework of the programme “Culture for Cities and Regions”.

During their three-day coaching stay, Tommila and the team of experts informed themselves about the ongoing process of developing the cultural strategy to be presented to the city council in 2018 and the related citizen participation process as well as Chemnitz’ application for the title European Capital of Culture 2025.

But also topics such as city marketing, tourism, urban development and the Morgenstadt process, which are closely related to the development of the cultural strategy, were highlighted. For this purpose, the team conducted interviews with actors from culture and politics and thus got a better feeling for the developments in Chemnitz.

The team visited cultural institutions such as the experimental theatre complex and the Lokomov with its affiliated off-space gallery in the back of the Sonnenberg, the spinning mill in Altchemnitz and the Gunzenhauser Museum and met the respective makers.

During an evening event, the experts were also able to meet representatives of the Chemnitz cultural scene and gain insights into their work and projects in discussions. Mayor Barbara Ludwig also received the guests for a talk.

While the experts already made initial recommendations for the city of Chemnitz on the last day of their stay, they will elaborate these in more detail in the coming weeks. The City of Chemnitz will soon receive a comprehensive report which will provide information on how the City of Chemnitz can improve the development process for the municipal cultural strategy, e.g. by involving other cultural actors.

According to the coaches, the guideline for the city of Chemnitz in this development process should always be: “Anything is possible”. The City of Chemnitz had applied for the coaching and was selected by a jury as one of ten European cities to receive such advice.

In addition to Chemnitz, teams of experts have already visited Bratislava (Slovakia), Angers (France) and Kaunas (Lithuania), which was recently chosen as the European Capital of Culture 2022.