Cultural policy is a difficult subject because on the one hand it concerns economic and political questions and on the other hand questions of cultural values. Talking about it in general terms is only possible to a certain extent. Especially since the economic and political systems and conditions differ from country to country. For that reason we cannot generalize the problems and methods of resolving them of different countries. But there are some basic problems that are quite similar everywhere in the Western World.
        In the following I want to discuss these questions, not theoretically but based on the example of Switzerland’s biggest city Zurich.
        Cultural policy in Switzerland is quite complicated. Switzerland is a confederation of 26 pretty self-contained counties called “cantons”. These cantons are organized in municipalities having each its local self-government. This system of federalism has many advantages but the downside is, that every municipality has its own laws and rules. Concerning cultural policy the federal government is only involved in supporting cinematic productions. All the rest is left to the cantons and the municipalities. That’s why I’m only talking about Zurich and not about Switzerland. But in general we can say, that culture is very dependent on government-aid in Switzerland. Compared to the United States there is - like everywhere in Europe - nearly no tradition of private sponsoring or patronage. Some say this is due to missing tax reliefs. This may be correct for companies, but for individuals in Switzerland I think it’s more a question of mentality. The protestant tradition demands modesty. Understatement is more popular than self-centred publicity. Museums or foundations are named only after deceased, never after living persons; large donations are mostly given anonymously. Showing one’s affluence is frowned upon in Switzerland. Therefore private patronage is not very common in Switzerland and lots of cultural activities depend on subsidies.
        Let’s face now Zurich and look about 25 years back. At the end of the 1970ies the situation in Zurich was as follows: while Zurich was experiencing a continuous economic boom, the largest city in Switzerland lagged somewhat behind in cultural matters. There was no money and no room for other cultural events besides the established institutions Opera, Tonhalle (concert hall with a symphony orchestra), Schauspielhaus (classical theatre) and Kunsthaus (museum of fine art) and the big commercial pop music concerts. There was no appreciation for the alternative-, sub- or counterculture at all. Although there was a lively scene of young alternative rock and jazz musicians in Zurich there was no place where one could hear or play such kind of non-commercial music. Even jazz bands found it difficult to get suitable venues to play in. It wasn’t even allowed for buskers to play in the streets at that time.
        So the youth felt fooled, when the city council presented a 60 million Swiss francs project to renovate the Opera House of Zurich in spring of 1980. They claimed a fraction of that amount, which would have been an incredible amount of money, for their own cultural needs. They wanted a place where they could play their own music. But the then-mayor of Zurich answered to the question why the alternative culture doesn’t get any subsidy by saying literally: “Rock music is no culture!”  About 200 young people demonstrated against that Opera House project in Mai 1980. The government of Zurich reacted with a massive police operation that led directly to the first riot of the so-called hot summer of Zurich. It was by pure chance that Bob Marley staged a concert in the Hallenstadion Zurich's largest covered stadium that night. A crowd of 10’000 people flowed out of the stadium after the concert. Many of them took part in the raging street battle. The next day, some young people of Zurich squatted in a building in the city centre and called it AJZ (autonomous youth centre). There they had practice rooms for bands and organized concerts and other cultural activities. A few months later the police raided the building, evacuated the squatters and sealed the doors. The result was two years of hilarious protest actions, squats and violent riots. It was the most turbulent time in Zurich since the general strike of 1918. Many people feared that law and order would collapse. Despite of far reaching restrictions of civil rights the riots did not stop until 1982 when the newly elected local government finally allowed the youths to stay in the squatted Red Factory, a former silk mill in a beautiful lakeside location south of the city, owned by the municipality. The activists of the youth movement founded a cooperative that applied for legal status and arts subsidy from the city council. This was granted on a pilot basis.
Thereafter the Red Factory was not only able to stage alternative rock and free jazz concerts and avant-garde dance and drama but also to provide cheap practice rooms for musicians, bands, theatre and dance companies and studios for artists. This was an excellent chance for many young artists and performers. Cultural life was blooming in Zurich in the eighties. The subsidies served their purpose not only by coming to terms with the youth movement, but also by supporting experiments, alternative styles and new art forms. The Red Factory became one of the most exciting parts of cultural life in Zurich with its alternative rock and freely improvised music concerts and experimental theatre performances. Even the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the city’s most conservative newspaper, took the events in the Red Factory sometimes seriously.
        It seemed that Zurich had found a solution for a successful cultural policy. On the one hand there were the established institutions that carried on the old traditions of classical music, theatre and fine arts and on the other hand the innovative alternative culture institution as a counterpart. The municipality subsidises both. For a certain period of time this concept of antithetic pluralism worked well. The established and the alternative art institutions complemented one another and interacted in a prolific way. Symphonic orchestras played with free jazz musicians, the opera collaborated with video-artists and the museum of fine art discovered graffiti and the classical theatre got in touch with the experimental. The appreciation and funding of the alternative culture had a positive impact on the established culture and both main goals of cultural policy - preservation of tradition and support of innovation - were achieved.
        But the vitality of this cultural boom had even further reaching effects that diversified life in the city. Culture left the institutions. Not only buskers and comedians begun claiming the streets. Coffeehouses started placing their tables in the streets and people started walking on the grass and swimming in the lake in Zurich’s beautiful waterside parks; something that was inconceivable and forbidden in the seventies. Today Zurich Tourism emphasizes the cosy street cafés and parks on the lakeshore as a hive of activity during the summer months and a popular meeting place for inline skaters, bathers, jewellery vendors and street artists.
This model of a pluralistic cultural policy was very successful for a decade. The support of alternative culture as a counterpoint helped overcoming the narrow-minded localism of the early eighties and turned Zurich into the smallest cosmopolitan city of the world.
        But then, in the middle of the nineties the cultural policy of fruitful antagonism fizzled out: The Red Factory developed from an innovative to a preserving, from a progressive to a conservative institution. Not because of a program changeover, but because the world had changed in the meantime. Freely improvised music, punk rock and experimental theatre and dance are still the main focus of the program. Even if such performances can still be very interesting, these styles are neither progressive nor innovative anymore today. They have become some kind of elitist art form for a specific audience comparable to contemporary classical music. The Red Factory has lost its role as a motor of innovation and as a counterpoint to the so-called established institutions.
        Well, one could say, that the Red Factory has to change its focus and concentrate on new styles like hip hop, electronic music; however, this would not solve the problem.
Today the situation is much more complex than it was in the eighties. The division into conservative and progressive culture isn’t applicable anymore or at least not in the sense that established culture is conservative and for older people while counterculture is progressive and for young people. Nowadays the boundaries run across genres, social classes and age groups. The staging of a Mozart opera is sometimes much more “progressive” or “alternative” than a traditional punk rock or free jazz concert. One can find managers of fifty or sixty years of age in the audience of a rock concert as well as young anti-globalisation activists in the opera. The borderlines are blurred. Paradoxically the cultural policy of pluralism failed in the nineties because it had achieved its aim.
        Let me explain this: In the beginning of the eighties, there were two opposite camps: the conservative established serious culture for older people and the progressive youth-counterculture. In the first instance the advocates of the established culture insisted on the superiority of classical music, dance and theatre and tried to safeguard its supremacy by force. This kind of cultural policy caused protest and riots. So the state was forced to subsidise and reinforce alternative culture. The antagonism between culture and counterculture produced a dispute full of suspense and was fruitful for both sides as long as this antagonism existed, because it evoked experiments and new surprising forms. But ten years after, the tension ceased because both sides converged. Disappointingly the synthesis of thesis and antithesis was not tolerance or acceptance but indifference.
We see that in the case of theatre. Zurich’s Schauspielhaus had its first period of prosperity in the thirties and forties of the 20th century when the best German actors came to Zurich because they couldn’t perform in Germany anymore. Since then, the theatre lived from its increasingly fading good reputation without looking for new directions. In the eighties the theatre was forced to compete with the experimental free theatre scene that was located in the Red Factory. This competition was fruitful for both sides. There were new impulses for the traditional theatre and artists of the experimental scene got the chance to perform sometimes on a big stage. One of the most famous directors of this theatre scene is Christoph Marthaler who staged his early productions in Zurich’s free theatre scene and later in the cellar theatre of the Schauspielhaus. Marthaler became famous and was invited to work for renowned stages in the German language area.
        In the year 1999 Christoph Marthaler became the artistic director of the Schauspielhaus. And what happened? While all the well-known drama critics in the German speaking area complimented the persons in charge on their courage, the theatre in Zurich was soon faced with a loss of spectators. After a first boom, the interest of the audience faded. Marthaler was great as a counterpoint to the traditional theatre with his surprising and provocative stagings. But at the moment when one expects to be surprised experimental theatre becomes stale. Nobody goes to the theatre for instance to be insulted time and again.
It’s the same with music. The powerful chaotic noise of a free jazz or hardcore band was refreshing as long as one could only hear strictly organised euphony in concerts. But as a self-contained concept it becomes something totally different. The stress of the word counter-culture lies on the first syllable. If one deletes “counter-“ I’m not sure if there remains culture or at least a kind of culture one should subsidise.
        Another problem of cultural policy in Zurich is the financial situation. The economic boom of the eighties and early nineties is over. The government deficit increases year by year since the late nineties. At the same time the needs and demands for cultural subsidies have increased. In the cultural heyday of the late eighties the number of artist and performers also increased. Now in the days of financial constraints, more and more of them apply for subsidies, while the budget wanes. That means that we have to decide once again, what kind of culture should be supported.
        There are two possibilities: If we go on with the pluralistic concept, this will lead to an all-round distribution policy. Everyone who applies will be subsidised because there are no criteria to decide, if every kind of culture is viewed as equal. That means more applicants get less money. In fact, this is the situation we are in today. And I think, in the long run this serves nobody, except maybe those who get the subsidies. This policy will not advance cultural innovation like the stagnation nowadays shows. Furthermore for the careful preservation of the cultural heritage there won't be enough money anymore.
        The second possibility is to force ourselves to take a decision what kind of culture we want to subsidise. Although I grew up in the eighties and spent many good moments in the Red Factory I propose to re-think the subsidies given to the alternative- or counterculture, because I am of the opinion, they are not justifiable anymore. The reason of subsidising alternative culture was primary its function as a counterpoint. Nowadays it has lost this function, but we are still subsidising it. Artists and performers of the alternative scene in Zurich argue, that their forms of art are valuable culture that has to be preserved. I must say, sometimes I doubt that. But I’m not promoting a cultural backlash here. I also doubt for example the necessity of subsidising performances of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons time and again or some trends in contemporary classical music. I only emphasise that we no longer evade a debate about cultural values and about what kind of culture we want to maintain. Pluralism has come to an end. If we want to have a successful cultural policy, which preserves our cultural heritage and facilitates and supports innovation, we have to force ourselves to take a decision what the cultural values are we believe in. I’m not able to give here the criteria that lead to such a decision, because cultural values are not universal and must be discussed locally. But I’m convinced that neither everything that is old or established nor everything that once used to be alternative or progressive is worth to be preserved. We need to open a serious discussion about what we want to support and why. And even if we don’t come to a consensus, I think a fair dispute will be more exciting and fruitful than ostensibly tolerant disinterest.