Dortmund U

Dortmund is the largest city in the Ruhr region, with some 800,000 inhabitants. The city has a creative quarter. It is not just a couple of dispersed empty spaces but grew up in an empty industrial zone within the city covering 50,000 m2. In its centre is a former brewery which was closed in 1985 after the company moved its production site somewhere else. At the beginning there were no ideas what to do with the space which was an empty area behind the train station. There was a music youth club, but no economic activity. After 5 years, artists working with new media started organising illegal exhibitions in the building. Another 5 years later, the idea emerged to move the city's museum of modern art to the brewery. With the year of Cultural Capital approaching, it was proposed that the state government invests 50 million Euros into the reconstruction and renovation of the former brewery. The building was opened in October 2010. Now it is a cultural highlight, publicly funded, but in its surrounding there is still unused space. A solution needs to be found how to use this space and how to combine private sector initiatives with public investment given the process has already started. As well as in other cities, we held round table negotiations. But whereas other discussions focused on strategies and the use of empty spaces, in Dortmund they were focused on something else. Dortmund's biggest asset is it has a strong new media art scene, which people from all over Europe come to see.

CultureFighter

Bernd Fesel

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