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A memo sent to correspondents,
friends and acquaintances of The Budapest Observatory (BO) in
April 2001
Dear Colleagues,
BO was two years old
on 22 April. No champagne, though.
Houses of culture
An intensive and
pleasant weekend in Warsaw helped us (Dorota, Robert and Peter) to set up the
design of a comparative research programme on cultural centres in Europe,
including drafts of questionnaires for the national surveys and the case
studies. Naturally, financing will be a focus point.
After the final
touches, it will be sent to prospective funders: I hope they are eagerly
waiting for it now. This type of institution has received much less attention
in policy research than it deserves.
Kosovo librarians
Preparation has begun
for the training seminar for librarians from Kosovo, to be held next November
in Budapest. The seminar was initiated by the culture ministry of Hungary, is
part of the Mosaic project of the Council of Europe, fits into the work-plan of
the Kosovo Library Consortium, which combines a number of authorities and
international ngo-s. Organisation has been commissioned to BO.
Costs of academic publishing
From the "country
by country" portal page of BO site one more chapter is accessable at the
web site of the Open Society Institute (Centre for Publishing Development),
based on the survey covering 20 countries between Poland and Kyrgyzstan. This
part refers to the expenditure of producing academic books. Against
expectations, the structure of these costs has not come closer to western
standards in the last 3 years. On the average, almost 45% is still taken up by
production, which is nearly twice as much as in the west.
Call for courses
The Central European University has been
running summer courses for many years, including a few on topics of cultural
policy and related areas. In the spirit of open society, the CEU recruits not
only students, but lecturers and course designers, too, by way of open call for
proposals.
If you feel prepared
and qualified to propose such a course in Budapest in July 2002, your e-mail
must reach the CEU before 28 May. For more, go here.
Call for fellows
Although at the time
of writing http://www.osi.hu/ipf/apply.html does not contain it, reliable sources have
confirmed that cultural policy will again be an eligible subject for applicants
to the one year fellowship of the Open Society Institute, Budapest. Try it
again and show the call to your students or colleagues, too. The deadline of individual, practical and policy-oriented
research proposals is 1st of July.
EU Observer
Culture 2000
For the record: the 4th
of April was the deadline for applications for altogether 176 grants ranging
from € 50 000 to 300 000.
Some of you may be
busy preparing for the next deadline. The 15th of May is the
submission date for complex programmes, in eurospeak: projects covered by structured, multiannual transnational
cultural cooperation agreements, which involve participants from at least 5
countries. Funds are available for 2 or 3 years now. The cumulated financial
support for such a consortium may come close to one million €.
The offer is rather
tight: 14 areas are identified, with possibilities for one or two grants each.
Just to name a few from the 14: sub-aquatic archaeology; protection and
promotion of archives; philosophical and religious interactions before the 9th
century. Half of the items cater for creative artistic projects, from
contemporary dance to visual arts, with heavy accent on touring between
countries.
Swedish presidency
From the official
programme of these six months April offered nothing for culture; for 20 to 22 May an informal Culture Council is
foreseen in Falun/Tällberg. What will it look like, besides male council
members not wearing ties?
We hope to have the
programme of the Belgian presidency (July - December), soon.
Structural funds
We keep watching if
structural supports indicate possible use for culture, too. Among the dozen
cases in April, the one for Bavaria contains the renovation of urban sites,
which hopefully contains considerable cultural development. Altogether € 2200
are planned to be mobilised between now and 2006, which includes 536 million in
financial support from the European Union.
European Prize for Contemporary
Architecture
This year Spanyard Rafael Moneo received
it on 23 April for his «Centre Kursaal»(nice name, could be Wellness Zentrum or
Centro Leczebny...) in San Sebastian. The junior prize went to Florian Nagler,
Germany for a commercial building in Bobingen.
EU enlargement conference
Find the preliminary
announcement attached or see it on BO site. Preparations are being done at full
steam.
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