No place for poor artists

A place for art: the "ausland" on Lychener Straße in Berlin.

Berlin markets itself internationally as a city of freedom, creativity, improvisation and non-conformity. But the spaces and conditions on which this reputation is based have been disappearing for years. Studios are being laid off, clubs have to close, project spaces are struggling with rising rents. Artists, musicians and freelance cultural workers are increasingly unable to live and work in the districts that have shaped the myth of Berlin. Berlin once attracted creative people because there was space for them. After the fall of the Wall, East Berlin found itself in an exceptional historical situation. According to the Berlin Tenants' Association, at least 9,500 apartments were empty in 1990 due to structural defects. At the same time, Berlin's expected growth to five million inhabitants did not materialize; instead, the city even shrank slightly from 1993 onwards.

The result was an enormous housing oversupply. This was crucial for the emergence of the alternative art scene. Those who had little money could still find space: apartments as studios, industrial buildings as clubs, empty spaces as rehearsal rooms. An infrastructure that gained international prominence developed along the former Wall strip. Clubs like the Tresor and E-Werk, autonomous projects and artist collectives emerged while houses were occupied. Places like the “Tacheles” or “Kunstwerke Berlin” became symbols of this time.

The saying that people went to Berlin because they could live cheaply there has long since become just folklore.

The Senate dealt with the independent scene in contradictory ways. In 1993 he founded the studio program, from which today's workspace program emerged - unusual in Germany: he rented rooms and passed them on to artists on favorable terms. For decades, the program secured studios, rehearsal and project rooms. At the same time, the Senate sold its properties, privatized areas, and approved major projects such as the “Mediaspree,” which stretches for kilometers along the banks of the Spree. State-owned properties were put to the most profitable use possible. Cultural infrastructure was never a priority; it was more of a side effect of vacancies.

The "ausland" on Lychener Straße in the Prenzlauer Berg district is internationally known as a project space - in the basement of a formerly occupied house, it has been organizing interdisciplinary and non-commercial performances, concerts and exhibitions for many years. The author Tobias Herold worked in the collective there for a long time, including as artistic co-director. He described the "golden ten years" to Jungle World: The place was a good example of "how comparatively much even a small group with small resources but a passion for organizing and content-related ambitions could offer audiences and artists."

Berlin's special post-reunification history created a space on which there was hardly any rent pressure. “Life in the city was much more affordable, and the funding opportunities for the independent scene increased significantly,” says Herold. Today the overall situation is different, due to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, the general cost increases and especially the rising rental prices. However, according to Herold, one should not forget a sociological aspect behind these "hard factors": Roughly speaking, it was the generation of newcomers born between 1970 and 1985 who - with a certain socialization - carried the last major wave of subculture in Berlin - as organizers, artists and, "essentially also as a nightlife crowd".

It's not just that there are fewer young people these days. »A reference system like “the subculture” may simply no longer have the meaning or attractiveness. If the demand for something like this drops by ten, 15, 20 percent over the long term, then that's the critical point at which it often no longer works." This point seems to have long been passed. The saying that people went to Berlin because they could live cheaply there has long since become just folklore. Many freelance artists live from project to project. Incomes are low and irregular. At the same time, the costs of housing and living are rising. Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Mitte – places of cultural production for decades because of their cheap spaces – are now among the most expensive and sought-after districts in the city.

The social conditions that must be met in order to produce art are changing. Anyone who pays high rents and at the same time lives on an uncertain income needs reserves, support from family or other private resources. Anyone who doesn't have that falls out of the scene. The additional cuts that the Berlin Senate is planning in the cultural sector are hitting a freelance scene with an already precarious economic basis hard. Only 21 million euros will be available for the workspace program in 2026. Previously it was 45 million.

More and more freelancers from the cultural sector have to give up and look for a permanent position or declare themselves unemployed.

According to the Berlin Museum Association, around 130 million euros were withdrawn from the cultural budget in 2025 - around twelve percent. Further savings were stipulated in the 2026/27 double budget, although direct funding for the independent scene will not be affected for the time being. More and more freelancers from the cultural sector have to give up and look for a permanent position or declare themselves unemployed. Rapidly rising rents, halved studio funding and rising costs of living are driving many to Leipzig or the Brandenburg area.

The Archive of Youth Cultures houses a professionally managed and easy-to-use collection on the history of Berlin's subcultures. Daniel Schneider, the head of the archive and library department, is not only pessimistic in an interview with Jungle World, despite the difficult overall situation in the independent art and culture scene. Many artists and cultural workers are currently having to look for jobs that are not related to the arts in order to make ends meet - and therefore have less capacity for their actual work. “I suspect that the loss of cultural funding and political tightening will mean that things will become more informal again, beyond funding and outside of institutional frameworks,” says Schneider.

A strong countermovement is emerging in informal and niche settings - illegal parties on an incomparable level with good sound systems and awareness teams, sometimes with several thousand participants. New parts of Berlin would be developed: disused commercial areas in the southwest and Lichtenberg, Spandau with the island of Eiswerder, West Berlin. “People are looking and corners are being found,” says Schneider.

The imagination has remained in Berlin. Informal structures can compensate for precarity, but cannot permanently replace institutional support.