The Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs promotes the arts and cultural sectors within the scope of its responsibilities under state law. The department’s funding activities focus primarily on projects of outstanding quality by artists, ensembles and groups based in Berlin.

The cultural affairs department of the Senate Chancellery supports productions and provides grants in the form of project funding and stipends to artists based in Berlin. Funding may be awarded for projects in disciplines across the non-commercial cultural sector including the visual and performing arts, photography, new media, literature, and music as well as related forms and cross-disciplinary undertakings. The Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs provides funding for inter-cultural projects and cultural exchanges. The women artists program offers project funding and stipends for women artists working in video and film and awards in the area of visual arts and composition. A co-financing funding programme exists to enable Berlin-based artists and groups from the independent arts scene to submit applications to external funding bodies requiring co-financing. Generally, funding is not available for projects which are already in progress, but only for those planned for the future. Funding for presentations of existing work is available for Berlin-based artists, ensembles and groups of all disciplines, to facilitate the presentation of previously staged productions to a wider audience. The department supports the conservation of cultural heritage by funding the digitization of cultural assets. Please note that all funding is dispensed in accordance with the funding principles of the Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs.

Artistic freedom, independence, transparency, comparability and equity are the key principles in the assessment of applications and in the allocation of stipends, awards and project funding. To ensure that these principles are upheld, the cultural affairs department of the Senate Chancellery appoints a range of advisory boards and juries to appraise applications each year. The current appointments to these boards and juries are detailed in the programme flyers of the respective funding programmes.