Art and culture are here for everyone who lives, works or stays in Innsbruck. They not only shape the image of a city, but are also of outstanding importance for its identity, the attractiveness of the location and the quality of life. In December 2019, the City Senate therefore decided to develop a cultural strategy for Innsbruck, under broad public participation, which should contain proposals for implementation over the next ten years.
The first phase of this initiative was launched in June this year. On July 16th 2020, the process for developing the Innsbruck Cultural Strategy 2030 was presented to the Innsbruck municipal council.
A live stream of the municipal council meeting can be watched here: youtube.com/watch?v=76h1ynoqhec, and the press release can be found here: innsbruck.gv.at/data.cfm?vpath=redaktion/ma_v/kultur/dokumente33
“With the cultural strategy, we are creating an opportunity for all those who wish to participate in the joint reflection on how we want to shape and strengthen our city as a cultural city in the future. In this comprehensive process, we want to explore together what we can do to help implement our vision. We have noticed that the need for exchange and the development of new strategies in the fields of art and culture is particularly great after the past few months. The cultural strategy process is therefore coming at exactly the right time.”
Mag.a Uschi Schwarzl, Vice mayor of the City of Innsbruck
As a first step, a baseline study will now be carried out until March 2021. From April 2021 onwards, a discussion and workshop phase on the cultural future of Innsbruck will follow for several months. As many actors as possible from Innsbruck’s field of art and culture will be personally invited to a total of six topic workshops. The workshops are also open to all other people interested in the cultural future of Innsbruck. They are followed by the political decision-making and communication of the cultural strategy. After the planned resolution at the Innsbruck municipal council, the cultural strategy will also be presented to the public in May 2022. In order to ensure that the cultural strategy process is effective in the long term, two further phases will follow: the implementation of initial measures (planned from mid 2022/beginning of 2023) and then (around 2024) an evaluation and reporting to the municipal council with a decision on the next steps until 2030.
Expert support for the process is provided by Linzer Institut für qualitative Analysen (LIquA) under the direction of MMag. Thomas Philipp in cooperation with Mag.a Aliette Dörflinger. The process is strategical coordinated by a project team. In addition, a working group and an advisory board will be set up to provide support in terms of content.
“We see this joint process as an opportunity to put communication and exchange within the cultural scene on a new level between the diverse actors. Of course, transparency is particularly important to us. To this end, we have now set up a website which, among other things, offers the opportunity to find out more about the process and, if interested, to subscribe to a newsletter. Various results, which will be worked out over the next few months, can also be commented on here later. In this way we are creating an initial basis for direct participation by the population.”
Dipl.-Kult.in Rita Hebenstreit, office for cultural development and funding