Project description: The project represents a direct response of the independent cultural sector in Serbia to public spending and procedures related to the distribution of public funds in culture at the national and local levels and to the need to improve the working conditions and position of critical, socially engaged and experimental culture throughout the country.
Working groups were formed and the results of the competition of the Ministry of Culture, the Provincial Secretariat for Culture, Public Information and Relations with Religious Communities, the Culture Administration of the City of Novi Sad and the administrations for social activities of ten more cities in Serbia (Subotica, Zrenjanin, Kragujevac, Kraljevo, Kruševac, Užice, Novi Pazar, Niš, Leskovac and Vranje) were processed. Despite the unprecedented delay in the results of the competition, the working group and Predrag Cvetičanin with colleagues from the Center for Empirical Studies of Culture in Southeast Europe (CESK) successfully created a study that combines the monitoring of public spending on culture from 2015 to 2024. The book entitled: “Exercises in the Anatomy of Culture. Ten Years of Monitoring the Spending of Budgetary Funds for Culture in the Republic of Serbia (2024)” is publicly available on the website of the NKSS Association, and its printed edition is available at the KC Magacin and distributed to members across Serbia. The presentation of the monitoring results was followed by public events in three cities: Kruševac, Belgrade and Niš. Monitoring the spending of public funds in culture is among the main issues that the NKSS deals with in its campaign activities, and so this year’s online campaign also monitored and presented the results of this monitoring. The working group for creating policies worked intensively on creating proposals for documents to improve the conditions for independent culture, as well as for improving competition procedures. When the document was finalized, they invited stakeholders from cultural and educational institutions, as well as all interested members of the public, to two public hearings in which changes to the proposed documents were commented on. Thus, the final policies were created, or rather two proposals for policy changes, the first document consists of proposals for measures to improve the position of independent culture in the Republic of Serbia, while the second document deals with proposals for measures to improve competitions for financing and co-financing projects in the field of culture in the Republic of Serbia. The final versions of the documents were presented in Niš, Novi Sad and Belgrade. In Niš, the presentation of the documents was combined with the presentation of the monitoring study, so Predrag Cvetičanin presented the study, and Luka Knežević Strika presented the documents in the Deli space. In Novi Sad, the documents were presented by Vahida Ramujkić and Virdžinija Đeković Miketić, and the event was organized in cooperation with the Novi Sad organization LED art in their space Šok gallery. The Belgrade promotion of the documents was held in the Ostavinska gallery and was addressed by Milica Pekić, Marijana Cvetković, Luka Knežević Strika and Virdžinija Đeković Miketić. Both documents are publicly available on the Association’s website, and forwarded to decision-makers and institutions. Printed editions are available in KC Magacin.
Grant amount: 3,000,000.00 RSD
