Jena cultural concept

Jena has now updated the third cultural concept for the City of Light, which had a time horizon until 2025. The updated paper is intended to serve as a "cultural compass" until 2028.

The revision had become necessary as the previous paper was heavily influenced by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on cultural events. On the other hand, cultural work will face other challenges in the coming years, partly due to the multiple social crises. The work on the paper was also a joint course-setting exercise for the new management of JenaKultur, which has now been complete since October 2023 with Friedrun Vollmer as Director of Cultural Development and Cultural Education. She took over the management and moderation of the process, which lasted a good six months. Over 300 discussions were held with numerous cultural stakeholders and citizens committed to culture in order to identify needs, challenges and development goals.

Kulturarena Jena

A cultural compass for Jena

The five goals formulated in the 3rd cultural concept (2021-2025) have been sharpened in terms of content, expanded to include some aspects and formulated in a standardized way. They describe the cornerstones of long-term and sustainable cultural development in Jena and help to derive sub-goals and concrete measures from them:

Culture opens up spaces for democratic participation and co-determination
Culture strengthens the appeal of Jena as a city of light
Culture releases creativity and new impulses for society and each individual
Culture has a demonstrable impact
Culture contributes to the sustainable development of our society

Lubomyr Melnyk mit langem grauen Bart sitzt mit geschlossenen Augen am Flügel im Volksbad Jena

Lubomyr Melnyk im Volksbad Jena

In line with these objectives, a total of 44 measures were adopted to address the following topics:

Cultural education is strengthened in its position within Jena's cultural landscape. It supports the goal of empowering children and young people in particular to participate and contribute. The measures adopted are primarily aimed at better networking the existing offers and making them visible to citizens.
Cultural development is seen as an integral part of urban development. The creation of cultural spaces is also about negotiating any conflicts of interest that arise with the help of competent and neutral mediation. This is also the main task of the newly created position of a night culture representative for Jena.
In future,cultural work should also be viewed more from a qualitative perspective. Important keywords in this context are accessibility as well as sustainability. These aspects are to be incorporated into the cultural funding guidelines, among other things.
Voluntary work is to be strengthened and upgraded, as it is essential not least for the cultural work of the local districts.
Finally, intercultural cooperation with Jena's partner cities is to be given greater focus once again.