Strengthening the capacity and cooperation of civic cultural organizations for better public policies in the field of culture

Project facts

Project promoter:
A4 – Asociacia zdruzeni pre sucasnu kulturu, o.z.(SK)
Project Number:
SK-ACTIVECITIZENS-0047
Status:
Completed
Initial project cost:
€62,569
Final project cost:
€69,522
Other Project Partners
Antena - network for independent culture(SK)
KU.BA - Cultural Bratislava(SK)

Description

Despite the important systemic changes that have been made in recent years at the level of public policy in the field of cultural support, cultural civil society organizations face a long-standing problem of limited institutional development opportunities. Thereby the permanent challenge of sustainability of its activities. This is mainly because the vast majority of financial support are defined mostly for the support of artistic creation or its presentation.

The main project activities are the process of strategic planning for A4 - asociácia združení pre súčasnú kultúru development, strengthening the core capacity of the organization, creating a case study of the process and sharing it through workshops with actors networked in the local and national network of cultural organizations. The first objective of the project is to build up sustainable institutional capacity through an appropriate format of strategic planning and implementation of its results into the development and professionalisation of internal planning, decision-making and management processes and job development. The second objective of the project is a transparent sharing of positive and negative experiences in the capacity development planning process with other similar actors at the local and national level and creating a case study. The third objective is to systematically promote proposals and changes in the field of public policies and support instruments to enable cultural civil society organizations to develop their institutional capacities and their sustainability.

The target groups are civil society actors in the field of culture and representatives of public administration.

The role of the partners, Anténa - sieť pre nezávislú kultúru and KU.BA - Kultúrna Bratislava, will be coordinated cooperation with the project applicant in the area of ​​submitting and commenting on public policies at the regional and national level.

Summary of project results

The need and rationale for the project stemmed from the situation in which the field of contemporary culture and its diverse civic forms, such as professional associations, cultural initiatives, premises and bottom-up cultural centers, were located. Despite the systemic changes that have taken place at the level of public policies in the field of cultural support and positively affected by cultural civil society organizations (creation of FPU, creation of regional grant scheme BSK), these actors faced the problem of limited opportunities for their own institutional development and thus the challenge of activities. The main reason for this situation is that most financial support (including the above) does not allow to finance important personnel costs necessary for the operation of organizations, but is focused almost exclusively on the support of activities aimed directly at artistic creation and presentation.
Within the project, 5 main activities were implemented, through which the set project goals were met and the selected target groups were addressed. In an effort to create and strengthen the organization''s capacity in the area of ​​personnel and financial management, 2 new positions of executive director and financial manager have been filled. The next step towards the sustainability, efficiency and professionalization of job positions and planning, decision-making and management organizational processes was the strategic planning of the development and sustainability of the organization in A4, thus working with the target group in the form of A4. Subsequently, a case study was created. The transparent case study was created in order to share experiences from the capacity development planning process with similar actors at the local and national level within KU.BA and Antenna in the form of 2 online workshops. This benefited target groups in the form of independent cultural centers and civic cultural and artistic entities. Regular coordination meetings of KU.BA and Anténa member entities were organized to mediate discussions on common topics and interests, which were subsequently communicated to the public administration in an effort to improve public cultural policies at the local, regional and national levels. This activity addressed the target group of public administration entities, but also the well-established cultural and artistic entities, which had the opportunity to participate in the creation of better public policies.

Information on the projects funded by the EEA and Norway Grants is provided by the Programme and Fund Operators in the Beneficiary States, who are responsible for the completeness and accuracy of this information.