Visit of the expert team of the Council of Europe in the field of cultural policy and of the representatives of the Ministry of Culture

The officials of the Council of Europe in the field of cultural policy and Ministry of Culture and Information of the Government of Republic of Serbia, together with the Provincial Secretary for Culture and Public Information, Slaviša Grujić and Director of the European Affairs Fund of AP Vojvodina, Siniša Lazić have held a meeting on the revision of the “document on cultural policy” of Serbia and Vojvodina today. The goal of the Council of Europe’s programme is to support the redefinition of cultural development guidelines based on the work methodology applied in Europe.

The expert team working on the document for Serbia consists of the leading experts in the field of cultural policy: Kathrin Merkle, Council of Europe and leading European experts in the field of cultural policy, Philippe Kern from France, Kimo Ulake from Finland and Lars Siberg from Denmark. The representatives of the Ministry of Culture and Information present at the meeting were: Asja Drača Muntean, Assistant Minister, and Ivana Zečević, Gabrijela Masleša and Miroslava Turković from the Sector for International Cooperation.

In the introductory part of the meeting, Slaviša Grujić, Provincial Secretary for Culture and Public Information informed the members of the delegation about the cultural policy of Vojvodina, challenges in that field and the budget of the Provincial Secretariat for Culture and Information. Grujić emphasized that culture was an important field of social development that opened doors to a number of other fields, and in order to achieve that, preconditions needed to be fulfilled. Because of the aforementioned specificities, the cultural policy of the Provincial Secretariat was the policy of cultural decentralisation, i.e. possibility to stage performances and cultural events outside large towns and centers, so as to bring them closer to all our citizens. On the other hand, in the Provincial Secretary’s view, the balance in terms of cherishing culture, language and script and disseminating information to national communities in Vojvodina needed to be maintained, so that each of them could exercise their rights in this field guaranteed by the Constitution. International cooperation was also important, therefore, the Secretariat had good cooperation with Istria in Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Italy and a lot of other countries. Via the Ministry of Culture and Information, we participated in the project “Creative Europe”, whereby the Desk, as the basic unit, was in Belgrade and the Antenna, as a part of the project implemented though the European Affairs Fund of AP Vojvodina, was in Vojvodina.

Thanks to today’s visit and the opportunity to talk to the representatives of cultural institutions in AP Vojvodina, Kathrin Merkle emphasized that Vojvodina was a very interesting region into which they could gain direct insight during their visit and where they had meetings with local leaders of cultural institutions. The task of the Council of Europe’s experts in the field of culture was to modernise institutions and increase the level of creative culture, whereby the experts evaluated the cultural policy providing a comprehensive analysis and advice both in the EU member states and candidate countries. Therefore, according to Kathrin Merkle, when visiting the institutions of culture, it was important to obtain detailed information about their work method, programmes, plans, work organisation and problems they faced. Based on that, an analysis of the conditions was performed upon which they could give advice and assist in drafting the document on ‘’cultural policy’’ of Serbia and Vojvodina.