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A memo sent to correspondents, friends and
acquaintances of the Budapest Observatory (BO) in April 2000
Dear Colleagues,
On the second day of the conference
on Culture and regionalism a separate session was devoted to BO. Charles Landry
was the chairman and kept the participants in good humour. Still the same day
the board of the foundation also had a meeting. At both occasions a great deal
of questions and tentative answers were raised about the goals and means of BO.
They should find reflections in the activities in the future. Also on the web-site.
It was agreed that new structures
are needed for the involvement of partners in and out of the region. In the agreement
about the programme assistance of Unesco one finds the task of building out
focal points in each country. Formal relationship with competent institutions
was encouraged. Also, others reminded of the official mandate with which they
began to co-operate with BO. For sake of international acceptance, too, there
is a felt need of moving towards the establishment of an International Board.
On the other hand, the network of
permanent, or even occasional correspondents needs to be increased. The monthly
memos will be sent to this, wider audience. We shall try to open up the
web-site for interactive forum activities also.
EU
In different ways, both Budapest
meetings this spring went around the European Union. On that basis we have
decided to prepare and launch our next project. I hope to set up its draft
early in May. The idea is to follow and present the processes which are taking
place in the countries of East-Central-Europe for sake of knowing and
understanding cultural policies and, of course, financing mechanisms in the
Union. First of all we want to map the national contact agencies towards EU actions
in the fields of arts, heritage and the audio-visual.
Tax incentives
All last week I have been struggling with unfolding this
project, on the basis of material recieved from 4 countries (guess which),
other than Hungary. This demands some patience from contributors. As usual, I
invite everyone to check the developments on the web and comment.
Next Thursday I shall visit
Strasbourg and hope to find out more about the way the Council of Europe can be
involved in this project.
Edmonton
BO has been registered as an institutional member of CIRCLE,
the network on European cultural policies. Canada, the most European part of
the Americas, has offered to host this year's Round Table in Edmonton at the
end of May. This year's theme is Social Cohesion and Cultural Policy. Although none
of our projects has ventured into this field yet, the meeting will provide good
opportunities to discuss the relationships between BO and such agencies as
EricArts, Boekmanstichting (ReCap) etc.
Best Practices
Please, please: cases, people? (In
English, for €500.)
Countries
Croatia is on the top with two
contributions to our projects, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and
Slovakia have produced one each. The
rest, zero. (Hungary is a special case.)
Birthday
A year ago tomorrow, on the 22nd
of April, 1999, a
(for me) unknown judge registered the foundation of the Budapest Observatory. Other
than Easter Saturday, we shall celebrate our first birthday. Cheers!
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