Reset: The German Dance Film Institute Bremen sets itself up with a new organisation

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RESET:

The German Dance Film Institute Bremen sets itself up with a new organisation

An interim report about the financing problems of the institute
by Heide-Marie Härtel 

For more information on this topic, please turn to the article of Oct 25th 2007:
Dance Film Institute in Distress
Ten weeks before the end of the year, the German Dance Film Institute Bremen is suddenly facing its own finishing line.  

Open letter by Heide-Marie Härtel to the friends, supporters and users of the German Dance Film Institute Bremen
> Read Article

Three years after the last significant step of the German Dance Film Institute – changing its locations to the Forum am Wall – it now becomes apparent that the current institutional set-up is in need of a decisive renewal. The last three years witnessed both a growing demand due to the national importance of the institute and increasing costs for the location and the staff, but also decreasing market opportunities regarding the re-financing of costs and a tightening budgetary position of public promoters, all of which contributed to creating a continuing crisis which threatens the existence of the institute and leads to pressing emergencies at each year’s end. The institute was able to survive only thanks to the state of Bremen, the Federation, and the institute’s staff, who were willing to respond to the situation with liquid aids and by foregoing their own wages. This cannot and should not become the normal state of things.

Professional analyses of the conditions necessary for economic survival, conducted by the Cultural Administration and an independent auditor, discovered that the Bremen institute is in need of a fundamental re-structuring of its organisational and financial basis to be able to continue and expand in future.

Since the beginning of 2008, a task group led by the Cultural Administration has been working on a solution to this unfortunate situation. The envisioned time frame is the summer of 2008, by which time a strategy for the re-structuring should be mutually agreed on and initiated. The aim is to ensure the institute’s work under different conditions for at least 3 to 5 years.

Background to the Changed Situation of the Institute

Up to now, the relative stability of the institute’s financial situation was based on the staff’s willingness to work for very poor conditions. Often, the managerial level itself was financed by job-creation schemes, and even highly qualified members of staff were willing to accept cuts to their wages or even go without them altogether.

Another advantage used to be the institute’s humble locations, which allowed free or very cheap accommodation.

A third pillar of security was the double-construction of the institute in form of a non-profitable association and a corporation belonging to this association, which was founded with the help of the Bremen Cultural and Economic Administrations in 1996.

One can indeed call it a success, seeing that the calculations of the years 1995 to 2006 present a total profit of ca. 3 Mill. Euro for both administrative bodies. Less than 20% of these profits (over the years) were provided by the Bremen budget for cultural affairs.

Yet these three reasons for the prospering development of the institute, allowing it to become the leading institute of its kind in all of Europe, no longer apply today.

All the work is now shared between ca. six full-time positions (summing up the part-time and full-time members of staff), and some external free-lancers when the special need arises. The clients/users/target group (theatres, TV-stations, universities, Goethe-institutes, etc.) expect of the professionals working in the institute a reliable service for free, or with minimal charges – just as they would usually expect of public libraries or universities.

The location the institute inhabited up to 2004 was sometimes threatening the preservation of the archive (by, e.g., poor storage). It did not allow for structured working places and could not provide for the public use and the user’s demands.

For a long time, the combination of two administrative bodies (association and corporation) allowed for each to support the other. The increase of non-commercial tasks, however, and the decrease of public TV stations’ broadcasting in the area of dance led to a shift in the overall financial structures.

A fourth aspect, which should not be ignored, is the increasing importance of dance in the theatres, in universities and in education altogether, which the Dance Film Institute, with its almost 20,000 video documents, would be ideally fit to serve – if only its existence was ensured.

Consequences of the Changing Conditions

With the changing conditions, there are also changes in the financial structures and the focus regarding the content of the work on the “project Dance Film Institute”. The proportion of fixed costs for the infrastructure has increased – similarly, the dependence on public subsidies for the growing proportion of non-commercial work has increased also.

This leads to a process in which particularly the Cultural Administration of Bremen, as the most important sponsor of the Dance Film Institute, is repositioning itself. The willingness for this step was affirmed by various levels of the Administration’s new managerial board. Trusting that an agreeable solution will be found by the middle of 2008, which will allow for the continuing existence of the institute, the Dance Film Institute agrees to discusses all the necessary steps with the Cultural Administration.

1st Step: The Aims of the Task Group

In February/March 2008, the cornerstone was laid for the re-construction of the institute.

The Dance Film Institute submitted a financial plan for the non-commercial activities of the institute, which amounts to 214,000 Euro a year. This plan accounts for the need for an increase in subsidiary means by ca. 85,000 Euro a year, in contrast to the former subsidy amount of 130,000 Euro (Federation and State). The institute’s basic groundwork is identified in this plan as the preservation of the archive in its substance and accessibility, the continual updating of the documentation of German dance and the increasing participation of the institute in the cultural life of Bremen. It is worth mentioning that this draft already takes into consideration that the preservation of the infra-structure is not carried by the non-profitable association alone. Apart from one full-time position for the archive work, the positions of management and secretary, e.g., are only accounted for as a third of a full position in the budgetary plan, while only 50% of the rent are included in the calculation.

After a conversation with the director of the Administration, Frau Carmen Emigholz, on February 14th, 2008, it was agreed that the principal aim of the task group was to ensure – after a proper auditing – that this budgetary frame, which is to be fed from various sources, will be provided for the work of the Dance Film Institute for a longer period of time, so that the institute would no longer be dependent on the insecurities of an ever-changing profit situation.

2nd Step: Transparency between Association and Corporation

The Administration suggested an independent audit so as to verify the testified amounts and to clarify the interrelation between association and corporation to outsiders. The institute agreed to this plan without objections and within two days an audit began to take place in the Dance Film Institute, the results of which have now been submitted to the Administration.

Since the results have unfortunately not yet been presented to the Dance Film Institute itself, I want to say a few words about the “philosophy of this relation”:
The corporation was founded in 1996, following the initiative and the lead of the Cultural Administration of Bremen. The initial motivation could be found in the undoubtedly marketable film productions, which were increasingly commissioned by the public broadcasting stations. The regulations governing non-profitable cultural organisations, however, could no longer provide for a reliable, technical infrastructure, which would allow for an expansion of this aspect of the institute’s work. With the help of Bremen’s economic promotion and with a loan from the Bank for Reconstruction (total amount of 300,000 DM, amortised) the foundation could be laid for a contemporary equipment, which is still in use today (albeit with constant modifications).

The work is split between the association and the corporation as follows: the association is enabled to conduct its work on a technically up-to-date level, since the corporation’s equipment is available at a minimum charge for rent. The corporation in turn can profit from the diversity and sophistication of the preservation of the large archive. If the corporation has a good order situation, the archive is fed mainly with pieces of documentation, which were produced within the context of the corporation’s work. Financial transfers between the association and the corporation are mainly based on the use of the equipment. Equally, members of staff work for both bodies. This, however, is not true for interns, so-called in-jobbers and unsalaried members of staff.

We are convinced that neither the corporation nor the association alone would be able to survive. There is no media firm in all of Germany which would survive based on such a specialisation on dance documentation for TV. It is equally unlikely that any public music library could be made to produce its own sound storage media. While in this latter case, the music industry fulfils this task, in the case of dance, the TV stations do not even come close to doing so.

Nevertheless it seems important for the future to create more transparency in the interrelation of the institute’s two organisational pillars and to clarify the profiles of each of the bodies. This is especially true for the corporation’s clear, responsible and – to the promoters of the association – always transparent financial contribution to the infra-structure, mainly by paying for 50% of the rent. It is also conceivable that the corporation would contribute to the re-financing of subsidiary means from possible profits generated by the corporation.

Regarding future development it would be desirable to check in detail whether there are different organisational structures which allow for a re-definition of this double-construction. It would be necessary for experts to discuss the advantages and disadvantages both of a conversion into a non-profitable corporation and of a transformation into a foundation.

Conclusion

Trusting that the task group will be able to continue its successful work, we look forward to celebrating our anniversary “20 years of German Dance Film Institute” with guests from Germany and abroad at the beginning of 2009 under changed conditions in the Forum am Wall – the “window to German dance”.

Heide-Marie Härtel, Bremen, April 4th, 2008