Platforming underrepresented artists, with a little chaos along the way

Could you give us a potted history of 90mil?

90mil is the home of The Palace Collective, a non-profit arts association that ran a creative residency series in Poland over the last 10 years. Since February 2023 we’ve had temporary use of Holzmarktstraße 19-23, in Berlin, transforming a derelict building into a multidisciplinary space for community and culture. We wanted to bring the collaborative, DIY ethos of the residency to a space in Berlin, prioritising community-led events, multidisciplinary art and emerging artists.

Over three years we’ve created an art school, community radio station, recording studio, record press, movement space, ceramics studio, screenprinting studio, theatre, art school and music venue. A large and diverse community of artists and culture lovers has grown, having a huge impact on Berlin’s underground creative scene and shining a light on the importance of spaces where people can connect, get involved, and grow creatively.

Could you break down how all of these amazingly varied offerings work together? Is there a single, unifying motivation or thread that ties 90mil’s activities together?

90mil is united by an understanding of the importance of collaboration and community-led cultural spaces, and by the shared values of anti-oppression, anti-discrimination, and the exchange of ideas between people and cultures. We are femme-led, meaning that we try to prioritise care, kindness and understanding in working together, no matter who is leading a particular project. These values create an anchor from which we can experience a lot of freedom in genres, art forms and activities.

All of the spaces in 90mil have been created by residents and the community - they all work quite independently, but communicate with the rest of the space to ensure things run smoothly and in order to create new opportunities and collaborations.


With so much going on, does the scale and breadth of programming present challenges?

90mil has grown organically, based on people’s ideas and the available energy and resources, so we've developed the structures around them as we go. It's still chaos sometimes, but that’s part of it! We’ve steadily created more structure - in order to allow people to realise their ideas. With so much space and opportunity, it’s important that decisions can be made easily and effectively.

We use an organizational theory and structure called Teal Organisation to govern the space. This means that while there is a leadership team who make key decisions, each space operates fairly autonomously and independently. If people want to do something, they can just present the plan to the community and then go ahead with it. This approach has facilitated the development of most of the spaces and areas of 90mil.

By working with collectives who run events in the space, we can also create a high-quality programme and reach diverse audiences with a small internal team. Making space for all the possibilities and collectives that want to do something at 90mil with such a small team is one of the most challenging aspects of our work.

Who is it that you seek to support, amplify or empower?

We prioritize interdisciplinary, experimental and community-focused concepts, artists and organisations. Local collectives, international names, and emerging talent connect here - on and off stage. At the heart of our programming is platforming underrepresented artists, narratives and creative practices; particularly supporting new and emerging artists, queer and diasporic communities, and those facing structural barriers within the creative industries.

I assume that bringing such a broad range of practitioners together, within one space, has huge benefits for cross-creation and collaboration?

Collaboration is one of the core ideas of The Palace Collective and is central to our work at 90mil, expanding not only our creative practice but our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in through cross-creation with others. Our experience has shown that building strong networks of exchange is vital for artistic empowerment, cultural activation and collective resilience: when people have the space and structure to create and connect, a lot of personal and social growth can happen. In times like ours, finding new ways to connect with and work with each other is really important, particularly offline!

Today’s cultural and social landscape is moving so fast, often in directions that we feel are unhealthy and that we have a lack of agency over… Reclaiming this space and creating room for conversations is critical.

Berlin’s a city often associated with community-led arts projects. How has Berlin’s recent development helped and/or hindered 90mil’s work?

The legacy of Berlin’s underground scene creates a foundation that other cities might not have: people here understand and are excited by DIY culture. This is what enabled us to use the building in the first place. The support, energy and involvement that we’ve experienced in recent years has been wild and has given us so much hope for the city. The fact that a lot of spaces like ours are now gone also adds a sense of preciousness and nostalgia to what we’re doing; lots of people say that 90mil reminds them of a Berlin that existed 10 or 20 years ago, but is now hard to find. There’s a lot of appreciation for the space and people want to be here, to experience it and support it.

Berlin is changing fast - and there’s a lot of scope for DIY culture to have a say in where it goes. With a lot of empty buildings around, and maybe more on the horizon, we’re hoping to see more cultural spaces like 90mil.

What are the key challenges that 90mil faces today? And how do you see those as representative of challenges faced in the arts sector in Berlin, or more broadly?

The challenges facing us, Berlin, and the arts sector in a global sense are common and interconnected; rising costs and changing cities create economic and spatial insecurity; censorship and political turbulence impacts us in the form of funding cuts and restriction of expression; and all of this makes it difficult to put the time and energy needed into building resilient communities.

At 90mil, we are very lucky to be able to work around a lot of these things, but we are still impacted. We have relative freedom of expression, yet in the face of growing censorship in Germany’s cultural landscape, every artist and collective that faces restrictions and funding cuts affects us all as a whole. Economically, the increasing difficulties are highly visible and it’s easy to see how they disproportionately impact communities who already experience some form of oppression.

The temporary nature of 90mil gives us a lot of freedom and brings energy to the community, but it also means that we live with a constant feeling of impermanence and insecurity. We’d love to be able to plan long-term and create more sustainable impact.

How do you hope that the grant will help 90mil?

We’re already seeing an impact of the grant. The first thing we used it for was to make the art school more accessible with increased solidarity places, which has been greatly appreciated!

We’re also using the fund to make time and space for our team and volunteers to come together and think more deeply about the work we do, how we can improve, what further impact we can have and how to organise better. This has been hugely impactful, particularly during times when economic insecurity is rising. To be able to commit resources to this is a blessing. We will also be directing some of the funds towards campaigning to find us a future, long term space, ensuring stability for our community and deepening our social and cultural impact.

In general, the grant will continue to support 90mil’s mission to champion underrepresented artists and foster inclusive, community-led culture. It’ll help us to expand our networks and create space for those often excluded from the cultural sphere; to build our operational capacity so that we can sustain and expand the grassroots infrastructure; and to strengthen the community at the heart of it all. Thank you for supporting our work - it means a lot and gives us more space to reach our potential.