Conference “Culture in Vojvodina part of Creative Europe – Prospects, visions, options”

The Vice-president of the Assembly of AP Vojvodina, Ana Tomanova Makanova opened the conference under the title “Culture in Vojvodina part of Creative Europe – Prospects, visions, options”, which was held at the Province Assembly and organised by the European Affairs Fund of AP Vojvodina and Vojvodina Slovaks Cultural Institute, and supported by the Province Assembly.

The conference was dedicated to the prospects of financing organisations in the area of culture in AP Vojvodina and presentation of examples of best practice in cultural cooperation of Vojvodina and neighbouring countries, about which the attendees were informed by a number of local and foreign cultural organisations participating in the conference. Moreover, Creative Europe Programme 2014-2020 was presented. The Programme is based on the experiences of the on-going programmes Culture and Media, which will end next year. According to the European Commission, thousands of people working in the area of film, television, culture, music, performing arts, heritage and similar areas will benefit from the increased EU support under the new Creative Europe Programme, recently presented in Brussels. The indicative budget of EUR 1.8 million for the period 2014-2020 is an expected and necessary increase in the support for culture and creative industries, which are the main source of employment and development in Europe. Opening the event, Vice-president Ana Tomanova Makanova invited representatives of national communities to work on the protection of cultural heritage based upon the model of examples of best practice in interregional cooperation, by means of joint projects in cooperation with the Vojvodina European Office in Brussels, thus prevent economic crisis resulting in spiritual crisis. In addition, the Vice-president emphasised that it was important that the representatives of the National Councils had had their first meeting with the director of Vojvodina European Office in Brussels, Predrag Novikov a few days before and the conclusions was that that office was, in fact, someone who was to help us network, set our priorities, develop good projects and, assisted by their associated, come up with projects that would provide for us better working conditions.

Among those who presented their experience and examples of best practice in the use of EU funds were the representatives of Cultural Contact Point, EXIT team, Student Cultural Centre of Novi Sad, Creative Industries Cluster of Vojvodina, Balkankult Foundation, City Acupuncture from Zagreb, Zagreb Society of Architects, Voice of the Village from Hungary, cultural organisations from Žilina in the Slovak Republic and others. The speaker on behalf of the European Affairs Fund of AP Vojvodina was Ivana Đurica and the moderator at the conference was Milina Sklabinski, Vojvodina Slovaks Cultural Institute.