Would you like a guided tour of Berlin's Museum Island or Hamburg's Kunsthalle? But you're not mobile, have little money, or are visually impaired? It's okay—if you can use a phone.

The museum tour is about to begin. Fifteen people are waiting for their guide, Corinna Fehrenbach. But the art expert is standing alone at the entrance to the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne (MAKK). There, she puts on her headset, calls a number, and begins to talk. She's giving a telephone tour.

"I'm standing here, ready to go, in the museum's large foyer, and Cologne Cathedral is only two minutes away. Just so you have an idea of ​​where we are," she says cheerfully, talking about the design exhibition. Fehrenbach gives a roughly one-hour guided tour over the phone. It's part of the Hamburg project "Bei Anruf Kultur" (Culture on Call).

More than 100 German museums are now participating, and on June 15, the Hamburger Kunsthalle will be participating for the first time. Works by Édouard Manet, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and the Belgian contemporary artist Berlinde De Bruyckere will be discussed.

Many museums offer on-site tours for the blind and visually impaired. The telephone tours offered by "Bei Anruf Kultur" go a step further—reaching the sofa and coffee table of art and culture enthusiasts.

The inclusive project was launched by the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, several Hamburg museums, and an office for inclusion during the coronavirus pandemic in February 2021. The idea: If people can't come to culture, culture will come to them. Over the telephone.

This program is aimed at people who want to experience culture live but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons. For example, they are blind or visually impaired, have limited mobility, cannot afford to attend, or are uncomfortable in large groups.

The pandemic is now over, and the project has persisted and grown. "Currently, there are 111 cultural institutions that have already offered telephone tours or will do so in the near future," says project manager Melanie Wölwer.

The audio tours are free of charge. They are funded by Aktion Mensch and the Hamburg Cultural Authority—currently around €105,000 annually. However, this only covers about half of the costs (around €200,000).

"The rest has to be provided as a personal contribution, which remains a major challenge for us." Wölwer and her team hope for more donations – not only from private individuals, but also from foundations and companies.

Gertrud Feld, a Saarbrücken resident, is happy to donate to the audio tours. The 61-year-old has been blind since birth and a fan of "Bei Anruf Kultur" (Culture Call). She has been a regular participant for more than a year. She has already given tours of the Helmut Schmidt House in Hamburg, the Museum Island in Berlin, and the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar.

"I'm so happy that I can hear and experience so much from home. I always discover something beautiful, new, and exciting that I didn't know before." She became aware of the audio tours through the Saarland Association of the Blind.

The guides have been trained in advance, as a purely audio tour requires a different approach. "Of course, the rule of thumb is: less is more," says Cologne museum guide Corinna Fehrenbach. "We don't want to overload the mind with stimuli."

She prefers to focus on a few objects and then describe them in detail: shapes, colors, textures, comparisons with familiar objects from everyday life and art history. She also chats about how light or dark it is in the exhibition space at the moment and what it smells like.

"I have to be much more focused on tours over the phone. The difficult thing is that I don't get any feedback," says Fehrenbach. No one nods, smiles, ponders, shows any particular interest, or even seems bored.

"I'm not really a big gesticulator. But when I was on the phone, I noticed that I was using both hands to talk." She gestures considerably more. "That, and the fact that I walk into a room speaking loudly, is probably sometimes irritating for some museum visitors," she says, laughing.

All of this actually leads to callers being guided impressively through the museum just by listening. Gertrud Feld, who is blind, finds the audio tour a great enrichment. She enjoys drinking coffee and listening intently. "You always leave wiser than when you entered."