culture in the neighbourhood - goldbekHaus in Hamburg

A spot on goldbekHaus in Hamburg Winterhude:

The cultural center goldbekHaus in the neighbourhood of Hamburg/Winterhude was build up at the end of the last century as a chemical factory. The factory moved out, parts of the buildings became reconstructed and 1981 the initiative started mit cultural programs. A short technical overview: The goldbekHaus offers workshop-space for photography, screen printing, pottery and woodwork, multi-purpose rooms, a multi-functional hall and a restaurant within it’s eight hundred square metres over three floors. Now a spot on the program: We differentiate between programes for groups with particular interests (children, the young, and senior citizens) and programmes that cater to everyone in our city district. We offer programmes of particular cultural, educational or technical interest, as well as plenty of sporting activities. You can take part at several events (theatre, music, films, literature), courses and projects or our own theater-productions. In order to realize all that is to be offered we do not only use our own premises, but also those belonging to the local public library, church community and schools. A monthly published information pamphlet (which is also laid out here...) shows everyone, what is currently on offer. Parallel to our programmes we invite groups and initiatives from Winterhude to organize theire groupwork independently in our rooms. As an example here I should like to cite the Graue Panther, the grey panthers, a group of highly motivated senior citizens. Theire program is, to build up a social network and give senior citizens a political voice in the public. Another group is the Verkehrsplenum Winterhude, the Winterhude traffic group, whose aim is to reduce the through traffic roads in the district and increase the area available for parks and playgrounds, ore one of the newer groups: TauschRausch. Its hard to translate but the idea is easy: people exchange service without money. For an exemple: I offer you 3 hours babysitting and you repair my bycicle. In times of growing unemployment and shrinking income many people try this way, to organize theire everyday life. We have a calculated annual visitor count of roughly one hundred thousand to our premises. The professional team consists of eleven very differently schooled colleagues, who mostly work on a part time basis between twenty-five and thirty-five hours per week. Our staff are qualified in the fields of education in theatre, social work and economic management. A lot of freelance teachers and artists participate in some of the projects and courses. We have a financial turnover of roughly one million, one hundred thousand Deutschmarks. A quarter of this sum is made up of our own incomes gathered through functions, membership fees, course fees and the leasing fees from the gastronomic business. The remainder is made up through a grant from the cultural department. This picture of a professionally run service sector business needs to be corrected by the fact, that there are still a lot of members of our association, who initiate and organize parts of the programme in there leasure time without earning money. A smaller group also helps to administer the house.

Some words to the background of goldbekHaus:

During the seventies numerous local initiatives developed in Hamburg. Perhaps some of you know a bigger one of them just called Fabrik (the factory). Nearly all of them found homes either in old factory buildings or former office blocks (such as the Honigfabrik, Motte or goldbekHaus), or brought new life into small stores whose owners had long moved out. This ”squatting” in commercial property did not just have advantages with regards to low rents, nor was it simply done for aesthetic reasons; it was an offensive approach which took the noticeable social changes as a basis for it’s activities and contributed to the re-urbanisation of inner-city areas by reclaiming deserted industrial spaces. So the point is not to create illustrious meeting places for an alternative scene. The question is rather more determined by the following: how Tenants’ initiatives can be helped in their attempts at securing fair rents; how more adventurous playgrounds, increased opportunities in leisure time activities and even special cultural events for the young can be developed in the densely populated inner-city areas; how to aid ethnic minorities in the development of cultural activities outside of their small two-room appartment in an old building; how the ever-increasing inner-city traffic problem can be tackled in conjunction with local residents; how public space in the broadest sense can be won back; public space as a topic for art-projekts. This can be regarded as a grass roots initiative for dealing with the inner-city crises, which were a major talking point of the seventies.

Support of "culture in the neighbourhood" by the cultural administration in Hamburg:

The first step in this field was taken in nineteen seventy-seven by the Ministry of the Interior. They created a department for leisure. It’s task was to organize the city’s decreasing resources of space, rooms and finances in a way that would create adequate possibilities for citizens to spend their leisure time in their surroundings. The one hundred and four city districts in Hamburg with their rural history in some cases built the basis for the support of projects. For the city planners the city district seemed to be the most suitable unit to develope specific cultural milieus. In nineteen seventy-eight the support of "culture in the neighbourhood" was made one of the most important measures of cultural support in Hamburg, and twelve months later the young department was integrated into the cultural administration. To do justice to the already active local initiatives and to make the choices of support understandable, criteria of support were formulated which are still valid. The cultural administration believed, that it is more important to support a net of various institutions founded on citizens initiatives, to trust in the competence of active citizens and not - as in other German cities (like Nürnberg) - to push a special type of cultural center. The Hamburg administration always supports various initiatives deriving from very different milieus: family and educationally orientated groups in middle class suburbs next to politically ambitioned initiatives in the inner city. The criteria of support are: 1. Only committed initiatives and groups get money for a cultural center. That means, that there must be a start up by own power. 2. The initiative must aim at integration of different social and age groups. It must offer different types of activities and not restrict itself solely to arts and crafts or sports, etcetera. 3. The initiatives’ work must reflect the needs of the citizens of it’s district. 4. The initiative must seek collaboration with other groups and institutions in it’s district for example libraries, or youth centers. 5. The district must be able to offer buildings or rooms that are suitable for the work of the initiatives. 6. As the upholder of a local cultural center the initiative must prove it’s ability to provide a considerable amount of the necessary finances independently through membership fees, donations, honorary work, etcetera. In judging these criteria it is important to stress that for the first time the idea of integration became part of the guidelines for public support and a new area of conflict between social, political and aesthetic categories became apparent. Even though these criteria were set with the best intentions to be suitable to the milieu of specific initiatives, they have been questioned lately by groups from the socio-cultural scene. A comment has been made about the ”initiative as a pre-condition for support” that, especially in numerous newly settled districts where the forming of initiatives has not yet taken place, the financing of cultural activities must be independent of this fact. Bremen for example, the next big city close to Hamburg, follows other paths by supporting professionally initiated cultural programmes in suburbs. There are also other opinions about the aspect of integration as a pre-condition for support. Over the last few years some institutions have in fact specialized in certain areas of activity, or in other cases certain areas of activity grew independent of the initiative they originated from. Projects that are limited to certain cultural disciplines or ways of offering culture find it difficult to get suport. On the other hand the fulfilment of all pre-conditions does not mean that financing can be assured without problems. Money is growing tight in the public cashbox - and not only in Hamburg!

A look at the surrounding of goldbekHaus:

The Northern district has the largest density of population in Hamburg with approximately five thousand inhabitants per square kilometre. This average number increases, especially in the southern parts of the district, due to highly dense building practice. The immediate surrounding of the goldbekHaus consists in part of old workers’ and employees’ apartments that were built around the turn of the century. Other complexes were built in the nineteen-twenties and after the second world war. Numerous expensive villas on the banks of the Alster (a beautiful lake in the middle of Hamburg) form the Western boundary of the district are a contrast to the more proletarian industrial history of the other parts of the district. Approximately thirty thousand inhabitants belong to the center’s immediate surroundings. Its lively streetlife is characterized by numerous young small families, larger family groups of immigrants and refugees, many widowed older people and students. A re-development of the area was planned in the nineteen-sixties, but was never realized, so that now in spite of the growing number of rental apartments that are becoming privately owned, the mixture of living space, shops, service sector businesses and small companies has been maintained. One of the reasons for founding the initiative located in the goldbekHaus in the early nineteen-seventies was the lack of playground for children and youngsters caused by an increasingly dense building practice. Even before the initiative moved into the factory building, people organized local festivals, arts and crafts workshops in other institutes such as churches, schools and libraries, and created a lobby for the transformation of the old chemical factory into a cultural centre. The opening of goldbekHaus in the fall of nineteen eighty one and the 15th anniversery in september 1996 show the success of this initiative.

Question for the future:

Is it possible, to keep a lively balance between professional organised programs and free initiatives and groupwork to serve the needs of the community and will there be enough response and support for all that? With a look at the running program and the energy you can feel in different groups surround goldbekHaus I would say: Yes - it will work! But I´m insure with a look at the discussion about money for fundamental financing. Public finances in the cities are in a big crisis. In Hamburg for an example the system of public libraries with rooms in every part of the city will shrink extremly. Also the public library in our neighbourhood will be closed. This is a bad crack in our cultural network and I don´t know in the moment, how to repaire it. In my opinion, you can´t replace professional work (like in public libraries) by initiatives work. Perhaps you can do some projects together but not the basic work. Initiatives for the community (in the meaning of unpayed groupwork) can not be forced but promoted! And that´s the way, we try to organize our work. goldbekHaus is a kind of agency for social and cultural developement in the community with own professional organised programs on the one side and professional support for initiatives on the other side.
Werner Frömming - 9/96

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