Asociacija, Association of Arts and Culture NGOs and Freelancers

Contact

Asociacija, Društvo nevladnih organizacij in samostojnih ustvarjalcev na področju kulture in umetnosti

Metelkova 6, SI-1000 Ljubljana

http://www.asociacija.si

info@asociacija.si

Phone386 (0) 51 773 611

Asociacija (English: "Association") is an association of non-governmental organisations and freelancers active in arts and culture in Slovenia. It strives to advocate their interests and generally better the conditions for the dynamic cultural and artistic production of the so called 'independent sector'.

Established in Ljubljana in 1992 as an informal network, Asociacija officially registered as a non-profit cultural organisation in 2003 and – via funds obtained from the European Social Fund – got professionalised in 2009. The organisation has about 50 major NGOs and a few hundred of freelancers as members.

Mission

Asociacija aims to accelerate and refine the articulation of political will at the level of cultural policy makers in order to create conditions for a long-term sustainability of different artistic practices and practitioners, especially in the spheres that are of a lower priority to governmental institutions. It tries to create an equal opportunity platform for the independent sectors, particularly in relation to working conditions, financial support and evaluation mechanisms. Another task of the association is to monitor legislation and propose measures that ensure and better the social security of culture freelancers.

Featured activities of Asociacija also include organising public round tables and workshops and publishing manuals and analyses on the functioning of NGOs and the possibilities of their improvement. Asociacija is regularely successful in a number of cases that relate to legislation procedures, governmental strategic documents, public funding arrangements, and other systemic measures. It also organised protests against cuts into cultural funding.

Publications

Asociacija published the Study on the Lack of Facilities for Independent Activities in the Field of Culture in Ljubljana (1998 and 1999), which had important influence on improving the infrastructure conditions of NGOs in culture (i.e. the establishment and/or preservations of the Old Power Station, Tovarna Rog, Kino Šiška, Metelkova, etc.).

Another project was the publication of The White Book which contains statistical data from the years 1998 to 2001 about its members (currently about 50 major NGOs and hundreds of freelance artists) and which showed that the NGOs in the field of art and culture produce results equal to those of the public sector and that the served public interest is comparable to the results and effects of the public sector in culture. Later followed published statistics about the number of cultural events produced by its members in 2006. In 2009 Asociacija launched the national project Networking and Capacity Building of the NGO in Culture, partly funded by the European Social Fund.

International projects

In 2017, Asociacija initiated CUBUS, a web information hub for culture and business collaborations in the Balkans. It is meant to explore the different models of such practices, present studies of the relevant legislative frameworks, and to be an ever-growing resource of knowledge for artists, NGOs, business and policy-makers.

Asociacija's main partners in this project are Association for Culture and Art CRVENA (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Jadro – Association of the independent culture scene (Macedonia), and Centre for Empirical Cultural Studies of South-East Europe (Serbia).

In 2020, Asociacija and its partners were selected on the Creative Europe Western Balkans call to participate in the project "Regional Lab: New Culture Spaces and Networks as drivers of an Innovative and Sustainable Bottom-up Development of Regional Collaboration" led by Kooperativa – Regional Platform for Culture from Croatia.

See also

• Artservis.org

External links

• Asociacija website
• CUBUS website