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Start > Masterprogramm Cultural Studies: Culture and Organization (M.A.) -> Kernbereich -> Fields of Culture and the Arts

Lehrveranstaltungen

Functions of Arts and Culture for Urban Development - The Case of Hamburg (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Volker Kirchberg

Inhalt: Throughout my academic life I have studied changes in the urban meanings and functions of culture and the arts for urban development in Baltimore and Hamburg. In both cities, the usage and the interpretation of the arts for urban development has clearly changed over time. In Baltimore, the narratives have changed from a Eurocentric attitude of an established bourgeoisie, “educating the masses”, in 1988, to a neo-liberal economization of the arts as “rendering the creative city” in 2004, to an experimental “nurturing the creative edge” in specific artistic districts in 2010. In Hamburg (in 2006), the importance of art and culture in urban policy could be spotlighted under the slogan “creativity as motor for the growth machine”, reducing the arts to a lever of economic development. In 2010, a progressive socio-cultural and partially sustainability-conscious counter-movement against this neoliberal focus has risen in Hamburg, under the umbrella slogan/network label “Right to the City”. Starting from some inner-city initial places that call for an alternative socio-cultural urban development, this network gained influence although it still had to fight and rarely overcame the calcified top-down neoliberal policies of Hamburg’s government. In 2016, I looked again at Baltimore, specifically at the racially discriminatory effect of the arts in that city, and I resumed the comparative perspective in 2022 by studying issues of racism and diversity in Hamburg’s arts institutions, together with the previous master course on “fields of arts and culture”. This seminar now will also have a heavy empirical orientation, going back to the initial research question of the functions and meanings of arts and culture for Hamburg’s urban development. How have these functions and meanings changed in the last ten years, who are the main artistic, socio-cultural and urban players, and where are the fault lines, if there are any, between a still mostly neoliberal state and a partially progressive socio-cultural civil society? We will review some of the main scholarly texts on the topic but then will immediately formulate a questionnaire and interview these players and potential agents of change trying to find answers to the above question(s).