Die Kulturinitiative RheinMain
Kulturinitiative RheinMain (kirm) was established in 1998 with the objective of playing a key role in networking as well as highlighting art and culture in the Rhine-Main region, thus promoting and fostering cultural self-awareness here. As a lobby for culture and an intermediary between cultural institutions, the world of politics, and our active fellow citizens, the initiative aims at boosting the region’s appeal and encouraging collaboration both within the metropolitan region and with the world beyond.
Today, this nonprofit association run by volunteers and funded via membership fees boasts 135 members. The latter include heads of cultural institutions, corporations, local authorities, cultural decision-makers, people interested in cultural policy, and active and committed individuals. kirm’s catchment area is the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main metropolitan region, including its seven independent cities: Aschaffenburg, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Mainz, Offenbach, Wiesbaden, and Worms, plus the region’s 18 counties.
Looking Back
Kulturinitiative RheinMain was founded on the back of the elaboration of the Darmstädter Manifest, the Darmstadt Manifesto, which while emphasizing cultural self-awareness for culture at the same time called for public funding for culture. The manifesto was signed by more than 300 outstanding members of various areas of culture throughout Germany.
Since its inception, kirm has been organizing the kind of special events and conferences on those subjects that are of fundamental importance to the region, for instance on questions of restitution, aspects of provenance research, and issues relating to realigning our museums.
Moreover, the initiative has always sought to engage with politicians at the local and state level on questions of cultural collaboration within the region, as well as taking a firm stance on those proposed laws that will have an impact on culture in the region, such as joint boards for culture and the Act on the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region.
kirm was involved in the establishment of the KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain which has advanced various projects initiated by the kirm. kirm was involved in advising and deciding on the general conditions for the Kulturfonds cultural funding mechanism established in 2007 and has, for years now, been a member of the advisory councils at various regional bodies.
Looking Ahead
Our new website is intended to offer a platform for networking and highlighting the activities particularly of the smaller institutions in the RhineMain cultural scene. In the form of the Kulturportal, such a platform has already been put in place for the museums and exhibition galleries; the objective is now to gradually extend the idea to other sectors by planning strategic and themed cultural routes through the metropolitan region. With this in mind we aim to strengthen cultural cooperation between non-profit institutions in the metropolitan region and with local government and state level politics.
Moreover, a scholarly section is being developed for the website. In the long term, the aim is to make it possible for users to filter and evaluate all the data from the study "Zur Neuorientierung der Museumslandschaft in der Metropolregion FrankfurtRheinMain" (On Re-Aligning the Museum World in the FrankfurtRhineMain Metropolitan Region) by Dr. Volker Rattemeyer and Dr. Renate Petzinger as well as that available on the portal.
To complement this, we propose holding conferences and special events on subjects relating to cultural policy and culture in general, thus establishing a platform for the fruitful exchange of opinions.