Funding principles
In accordance with its charter, the Fonds Soziokultur e.V. (Sociocultural Fund) provides grants to models of cultural practice which incorporate everyday life into cultural work while simultaneously striving to ensure that art and cultural forms they develop feed back into society
Funding of socioculture should serve to promote the development of all citizens’ aesthetic, communicative and social needs and abilities. Funding thus contributes to the preservation and further development of cultural equal opportunities and democratic culture in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Objectives are to develop the cultural education of children, adolescents and adults through the communication and adoption of cultural and artistic forms of expression and to encourage and empower active participation in social life.
The guiding principle of the Fonds Soziokultur’s funding practices is that they should strengthen innovation and continuity in sociocultural practices. The fund sees its role as being to promote community capacity building through the development of self-organisation and individual responsibility in cultural work.
The funding principles described below are intended to clarify the objectives of the grants awarded by the Fonds Soziokultur e.V.
The budgetary resources of the Fonds Soziokultur are provided by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media).
General Principles
The Fonds Soziokultur e.V. uses its resources to fund projects which are of importance for the democratic development of culture in the Federal Republic of Germany overall and, specifically, which have a direct impact on developing the grassroots sociocultural environment. In this context, projects should function as models and be exemplary for the further development of socioculture.
The Fonds Soziokultur e.V. provides funding by awarding grants and providing loss guarantees. It funds projects which are limited in time; long-term mainstream funding is not envisaged. In this context, grants are awarded in such a way that additional public and/or private sources of financing can also be used and mobilised.
A special focus of the fund is on model projects which for financial reasons could not otherwise be realised. When selecting grant beneficiaries, priority is given to independent coordinators (initiatives, clubs) over public institutions. Projects which are awarded grants by the fund should, in their entirety, be a reflection of the national significance of funding practices.
Allocation of a grant generally assumes that applicants will contribute an appropriate cash sum of their own. Particular emphasis is placed on the evaluation and documentation of project outcomes and experiences.
