Memo October 2002
A memo sent to correspondents, friends and acquaintances of The Budapest Observatory (BO) in October 2002
October has been characterised by revival and acceleration of activity at BO. Can this pace be increased in November?
Chapter 20
Autumn brings assessment from Brussels. Like we did before, BO has put on display the chapters evaluating the efforts of the candidate countries of Eastern Europe to comply with the audio-visual media standards of the Union. The title of the chapter carries the word ‘culture' but you would not find the few and uninteresting remarks without BO underlining those parts: http://www.budobs.org/eu-chapter20.htm.
Private support to culture
With our latest crew member Anna on board, work has started on the updating of our country profiles. Hopefully with KulturKontakt backing. Every week in November will produce progress on our site. Thanks to Krassie, we had a pleasant job with Bulgaria. Internet search promises an easy go with the Baltic states, maybe not only because they are so small. Where we get stuck, we may expect help from you - be kind to Anna.
Figures from Madrid
Commenting on the Madrid meeting on the subject a faint promise was made to come back. So we did. There Colin Tweedy quoted a few figures about the dimensions of cultural sponsorship. Now we looked behind. Not that we found something extraordinary but worth for a short visit to http://www.budobs.org/sp-gdp.htm.
Public grants for cultural projects
As planned, the updating and extending of our information bank has started as well. Acorns, the e-bulletin of Ifacca kindly and effectively let this known in a range much wider than our reach. This will certainly help Zsófi to attain the goal to get a (nearly) complete picture about the public sources and ways of granting cultural projects in east-central Europe by the end of the year.
The main emphasis is on specialised institutions, but not only. We want to detect mechanisms in those countries as well, where arm's length agencies do not exist and try to find out, why not.
Why not?
This is a complex question. I tried to put it as simple as possible and send it to many of you. I am grateful to early replies from Dorota, Dessy, Naima, Christopher, Baiba, Corina... I have not checked the email today.
Arts councils and cultural policies
Someone else is pursuing a related objective . Her question is about the relationships that arm's length agencies have with culture ministries. We leave Mary some time and then shall approach her and see what findings there are to exchange between ourselves.
Gambling on culture
Here is the latest version of the programme of this year's Circle Round Table: http://www.budobs.org/linx-circle-rome.htm.
Those who miss Rome, may take a seat at next year's round table in Zagreb. The theme will be e-culture. Whatever it means.
