The Story

It all started with the idea of voluntary support between artists, activists and experts who wanted to implement joint creative projects.
There is enormous creative potential in a wide range of areas in Berlin, but migrant artists in particular are often denied access to the implementation of their ideas, e.g. due to language barriers, a lack of knowledge of formal processes and ways of applying to public funding bodies, guidelines for
the correct implementation and accounting of projects.

A first vision emerged that we would like to support people from a wide range of social and artistic areas and from a wide range of cultural
backgrounds to implement their project ideas. Very soon the first inquiries came from interested artists and activists, we started our consultancy work and were already able to successfully implement the first small projects.

The expertise was pooled and we discovered the first possible
funding grants that made it possible to finance various projects. Nevertheless, as individuals, we repeatedly came to the point that funding from public funding bodies was often not possible due to a lack of a legal authority or that our time resources were insufficient to bring a project with all the individual steps to successful implementation.

The idea arose to found a non-profit association.

We continued to pursue our idea and through many further discussions, team meetings and network meetings, we found that many interested parties resonated with our project because there is a great need for this type of artistic project support in Berlin. We think it is right and sensible to divide up the tasks so that everyone can bring in their own strengths and potential (artistic direction vs. project management / project management).

As a result, the creativity, the purpose and the motivation of
the artists and activists do not suffer, but rather great work synergies arise in which everyone can concentrate on his / her main tasks.

We are a group of people of different ages, origins, professional backgrounds with and without a migration / refugee background and are volunteers in various projects in various areas, e.g. diverse music projects, theater, film, integration of refugees through volunteering, knowledge transfer and informal education, etc. This commitment of individuals is now bundled and strengthened by the founding of a non-profit organization, since our experience has shown that a project is not only of a voluntary nature Commitment can live and that there are few opportunities for public project funding as long as there is no formal structure and legal figure for our work.

The name ARTivisten describes exactly what we are: a group of artists, social activists and experts who want to implement creative ideas in the form of projects with meaning and a message.

ARTivisten e.V. starts to conform by the end of 2019 in Berlin.