Culture in municipal development

by the City's Department on Culture

Rostock plays an important cultural Rrole for its inhabitants, as well as for the people living in the area around the city and for visitors and tourists coming to Mecklenburg-Vorpomern. Additionally, the city has taken responsibility for the cultural glowing of the whole Federal State into the North European area.

The change that has reached all social parts of the society opens quite a lot of possibilities for the city and its inhabitants. To use them we all need a climate of openness, tolerance and creativity. Culture in its widest sense is definitively a part of the development, and therefore it needs special attention.

Municipal cultural policy is geared at the distinctive, historically grown character of the city, it preserves this special breeding ground and at the same time promotes new spaces for different ways of life that cannot only be reduced to the commercial and functional aspects.

Urban culture, as a whole, not only bases on different cultural aspects, but also promotes and develops them. Cultural diversity implies tolerance and respect for different thinking, action and feelings. It offers space for realisation of different interests, the reflection of the world's wide cultural diversity and lets people feel well in the city and identify with the urban community.

Advancement of cultural diversity also means facing the cultural challenge that comes with the information and media society of the 21st century. Rostock supports the dissemination of new cultural skills in media projects and the new media into the work of cultural institutions. Beside the institutionalised culture, the development of cultural initiatives as part of a civil society, is a main requirement for integration the realisation of equal opportunities, participation and social integration in the community.

An important part of the city's culture are not only the institutions, almost completely financed und run by the municipality e.g. the theatre, different museums, music and arts schools, but also the commercial offers made by agencies, cinemas, publishing houses, book shops, galleries, etc.

The cultural economy represents a wide range of extrapolated but often networked branch of trade. The city's cultural and educational policy gives a lot of space for private commitment and financing as well as for the organisation of events by private agencies and, as a result, strongly promotes the commercial link between culture, sports of tourism.

These three supporting pillars of Rostock's cultural life: municipal institutions, their activities and projects, the organisations that get municipal grants with their very differentiated work and offers, as well as commercially organised events, all together bring about the effect that culture in Rostock is much more than the so-called "soft location factor".