Roundtable: Undoing Discrimination? Diverse in Berlin?

“Diversity is a "must-have" in the identity of most Berlin cultural institutions. Sometimes they even invest resources for the multicolored flag that flies over them. So are diversity measures just another set of methods of solidifying what they claim to change? This panel, moderated by Samie Blasingame, puts it to the test: what does it look like in Berlin's cultural landscape? What are the inconspicuous formal routines, the small informal habits, the official and unofficial rules that create the feeling of running into a wall that one claims is not there? Are there any institutions somewhere that are undercutting the perfidious game and are there any impulses, strategies, methods, or people that are at least beginning to dismantle the supposedly non-existent walls? Are there perhaps even already best practice examples?“

This talk brings together professionals in the cultural field (artists, researchers, consultant, etc.) that share important perspectives and experiences on diversity and inclusion in cultural institutions. This discussion seems to be important for each professional who wants to work in this field to question themselves on power structures, accessibility and labels in arts and culture. The attention to questions of diversity and inclusion seems to increase in the cultural sector, but, in my opinion, brings a lot of insecurities and fragility for some (young) professionals in the field : how to deal with these issues when belonging to the privileged ? How to flip the settled power structures ?

The talk addresses issues of representation, legitimization and tokening of art and hands-on examples on how to improve „inclusion“ practices in the field. Most importantly, these topics are brought up and discussed by people identifying to those groups they are talking about, and thus sharing subaltern knowledge while reflecting on what this means. They share personal experiences and specific needs/examples of improvements which allows the listener to concretely think about these issues.
As the SHAKIN project deals with the question on how and by whom the knowledge produced and transmitted in the cultural sector could and should be more sensitive towards invisibilised knowledge, this talks seems to introduce important experiences and suggestions : the speakers not only share this knowledge, but also deconstruct the domination structures inherent to the process.

Location	Online Germany
Original language(s)	English
Existing translations
Length	1:23:00
Project runtime	-
Institution of affiliation	Freie Universität Berlin, HKW, Schwules Museum
Sponsor(s)

Name of contributor: Sonia Nikitin