Dear RRCGN Community,

We love our work. Every day, we passionately commit ourselves to supporting young talents in Cologne, making empowerment tangible, and consistently creating safe spaces for diversity, creativity, and community—both locally and through our international exchange projects. This foundational cultural work is indispensable for a vibrant, equitable, and future-proof urban society. But right now, this is acutely at stake.

The City of Cologne’s draft budget for 2027/28 proposes drastic cuts to specialized cultural education institutions. For us at RRCGN, this would mean our municipally secured core funding being slashed by half. This is a cut that threatens the very existence of many organizations in the city and massively endangers the well-established programs for children and youth.

Together with our colleagues from the other Cologne institutions within AG78, we reach around 50,000 children and young people across the entire city every year. We create extracurricular educational opportunities, strengthen resilience, and promote democratic coexistence—exactly where it is needed most.

However, what is completely overlooked in these austerity plans is that cultural education also makes economic sense. Every municipal euro invested in Cologne’s cultural education generates over 7 euros in external third-party funding for our city! The basic municipal funding is the indispensable foundation required to attract grant money at the state, federal, and EU levels in the first place.

We believe: Making cuts here is a completely false economy, ultimately depriving Cologne of a multiple in additional funding.