Creative Europe and Slovenia in 2017: yet another success!
Every year since roughly the second half oh the 1990s* hundreds of cultural organisations from across Europe get to be temporarily united in a joint enterprise. This is when one or another deadline for obtaining European funds for culture is due and when everyone is adding the final polishing touches to their respective, painstakingly compiled project propositions.
As of 2014 the name of the game is Creative Europe, the main EU programme of cultural funding, covering the period of 2014&ndasH;2020. Worth about 1.46 billion euros, it is intended to foster cross-border cooperation, ease the mobility of cultural producers and encourage the circulation of creative works; all in all, to support the creation of a shared European cultural space. The programme is divided into two parts – the (mainly) film focused MEDIA and the more diverse CULTURE, further partitioned into Cooperation Projects, Literary translations, European Platforms and European Networks.
The Cooperation Projects endorsed in 2017 (they can last up to 48 months, yet are typically shorter) got unveiled in May and in a stunning performance of their application-genius, Slovene cultural organisations managed to claim no less than 1,2 million of the roughly 35 million euros at stake this year.
The case of Slovenia
Such a performance was, in a way, but a minor surprise. When analysing the results between 2014 and 2016, Peter Inkei from the Budapest observatory already wrote back in 2016: »Slovenia is the incontestable east-central European champion in the Creative Europe programme« (taking into account the size of the cultural budget in Slovenia, one could probably also categorise it as the EU-wide relative winner). Anyhow, in 2017 Inkei reiterated himself, saying "the champion is again Slovenia with a 35% success rate"
Sports metaphors aside, what does this success rate stand for? Basically it means that out of 20 projects applied with a Slovene 'leader', 7 managed to be successful. They joined the other 74 chosen projects (out of 548 sent in), out of which 9 others also feature 10 Slovene organisation as partners (which, between us, is often the preferable position in terms of the funds/responsibility trade-off). With all this in mind, in his recent observations Inkei rhetorically wonders if Slovenes are "born cultural managers".
Genetics aside as well, the specific historic composition of the Slovene cultural NGO scene certainly plays a role here, though it is much to complex to outline here. One factor that nevertheless does seem to stand out fairly obviously (as also testified by the cultural managers themselves) is the Creative Europe Desk Slovenia, a small NGO helping out the applicants with advice, support and organised networking. Out of the many things they do is also a data mining and interoperability project done together with our portal, resulting in the interactive infographic presented bellow.
- Organisations by status
- Public
- Private
- Projects by field
- film and audiovisual projects
- interdisciplinary projects
- multimedia and new technologies
- books and reading / literary translation
- cultural heritage
- architecture, design and applied arts
- performing arts (theatre, dance, music)
- visual arts
- Organisation's role in the project
- beneficiary
- co-beneficiary
The EU funding infographic
The visualisation above represents the data related to the EU funding for culture, film and audiovisual media raised by Slovene organisations in the period 2000–2017. The programmes have been called different names (Culture 2000, MEDIA Plus, Culture, MEDIA and Creative Europe programmes) and Creative Europe is a fairly recent creation.
You can see the distribution by art field, by the role in the project (leader/partner) and – interestingly – if the organisation is a public one or a private one. Each square representS one participant, linking to his profile on our portal (the profile itself includes a complete list of one's European projects).
List of Creative Europe 2017 recepients
Currently, the 2017 only has the results for Cooperation Projects, but what can already be discerned is that 2017 is the year when public institutes have almost caught up with the previously much more industrious NGO sector. What are the reasons for this and if the still reigning policies of public austerity can be of any guide here is a speculation better left to others.
However, here bellow is the list of the organisations that were successful in the Creative Europe Cooperation Projects call, as unveiled in May 2017.
- Aksioma Institute
- City of Women Association for Promotion of Women in Culture
- Department of Art History, University of Ljubljana
- Federacija Institute
- Gallus Foundation
- Goga Publishing House
- House! Society for People and Spaces
- Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia, Maribor Regional Office
- Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture
- Ljubljana Puppet Theatre
- Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory
- Maribor Art Gallery
- Moderna galerija (MG)
- MoTA Museum of Transitory Art
- Pionirski dom Youth Culture Centre
- Sodobnost International Cultural Society
- Technical Museum of Slovenia
See also
- Creative Europe Desk Slovenia
- A list of ALL Slovene organisations ever funded by the Culture and MEDIA Programmes
- Culture.si infographics
External links
- April 2017 news from the Budapest Observatory, commenting on the CEP results
- May 2017 news from the Budapest Observatory, also commenting on the CEP results
- Research paper by the Budapest Observatory
- EU funding for culture? 4 observations from Slovenia, a blog post by Culture.si and Creative Europe Desk Slovenia
- Signed in 1992, the Treaty of Maastricht gave the EU (a relatively limited) legitimacy to act in the cultural domain for the first time. This newly acquired Treaty basis led to the establishment of the first generation of EU wide cultural support programmes in 1996, called Kaleidoscope, Ariane and Raphael. However, EU's MEDIA programme – mainly supporting film production – started as early as in 1991.
<small class="imgdesc">The infographic featuring the international impact of 18 successful producers from Slovenia who have received the Creative Europe funds in 2020 for cooperation with 94 partners from 24 countries!ration with 94 partners from 24 countries! +
