For years, the art festival inspections have also made it easier for people with disabilities to access its venues and program items, be it through ramps for wheelchair users or sign language interpreters for the hearing impaired. The Free State of Saxony is sufficient for precisely such measures via the State Directorate for Funding. The…
For years, the art festival inspections have also made it easier for people with disabilities to access its venues and program items, be it through ramps for wheelchair users or sign language interpreters for the hearing impaired. The Free State of Saxony is sufficient for precisely such measures via the State Directorate for Funding. The inspection organizers regularly drew from this pot, mostly in the mid four-digit range for inclusion measures. “As a rule, the funds were approved within weeks of the application,” reports a spokeswoman.
Not so this year. One and a half months after the application, the team received an email from the regional directorate: The application cannot be processed at the moment due to the amount of work in connection with the corona pandemic. And further: “Please postpone your project until after the pandemic, when normal conditions will be restored.”
Not an isolated case: the artist and theater maker Gabi Reinhardt also applied for money from the pot. For her show talk “Boobs, Theses, Temperaments” with well-known women from Chemnitz, she needs a sign language interpreter. At her request she received the same message as the inspection organizers: currently not editable, please postpone. “That is an impossible procedure,” says Reinhardt. “The regional directorate has at least the task of checking whether our concern is eligible for funding,” she adds. In the end she paid for the sign language interpreter herself.
The corresponding forms are still available on the website of the regional directorate or the Amt24 portal. There are no indications that the applications cannot be processed at the moment. When asked, the regional directorate announced that 27 applications with a total volume of 645,000 euros for the participation funding pot are currently not being processed in Saxony alone. Applications from other funding areas, for example those for hospice facilities as well as home care and amateur music, are still unprocessed. How many in total, remained open.
As a justification, a spokesman for the authority cites the tasks to cope with the corona pandemic, for which around 100 employees would currently have to be deployed, who were missing elsewhere. The authority currently has 160,000 applications from companies and self-employed who claim loss of earnings due to quarantine measures or childcare when schools and daycare centers are closed. “Urgent” funding applications are being processed “despite the extremely tense staffing situation,” said the spokesman. In addition, the staff of the regional directorate had been strengthened at short notice, so that the processing of the other open applications could be resumed.
That’s too late for the inspections that will take place this weekend. However, they found another way: The Chemnitz town hall stepped in and approved appropriate funding.