Friday, February 05, 2021
Relief for the cultural sector
Actors receive Corona help
The corona crisis hits the cultural industry particularly hard. Actors who in normal times often have short positions in film and theater fall completely through the grid of state support. The federal government wants to change that.
After a long struggle, the federal government has agreed on help for short-term employees in the cultural scene, such as actors. In addition to the self-employed and the employed, the "short-term employees in the performing arts" should also be able to apply for assistance of up to 7500 euros for January to June 2021, according to a statement.
This supports actors who are not permanently employed. So far they had fallen through the rust with the aid programs because they are only employed for guest performances at theaters or for films. Because of the short periods of employment, there is no entitlement to unemployment benefit or short-time work benefit. At the same time, according to the information, they have been largely without employment opportunities for almost eleven months, as stage operations have come to a complete standstill since March 2020 due to the pandemic-related restrictions. Film production has also declined sharply due to the Corona crisis.
"In this crisis we must not give up our cultural identity and we have to support the people who embody it," said Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier. Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz was delighted "that we can also provide targeted financial help for the actors who have been hard hit by the pandemic". From the point of view of Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters, "those in the cultural sector who are suffering the most from the pandemic, personally and economically, will now also receive a fair and generous offer".
According to a recently published EU-wide study the entire culture and creative industries with a loss of sales of 31 percent, along with air traffic, the most severely affected economic sector in Europe by the corona crisis. According to this study, the strongest decline is in the performing arts with minus 90 percent between 2019 and 2020.
.