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A memo sent to correspondents,
friends and acquaintances of The Budapest Observatory (BO) in June 2002
Dear Colleagues,
This is the last memo
before your summer vacation. The next one will be sent out at the end of
August.
Culture 2000
Next deadlines: 15
October for annual projects and 30 October for multi-annual co-operation
projects. For all other details go to http://europa.eu.int/comm/culture/eac/c2000condition_en.html#date
or contact your own Culture Contact Point. Good luck!
BBB 2003
Bigger... Better...Beautiful...? Conference on
the impact of the enforcement of the internal market acquis on cultural
enterprise in the accession countries; Budapest, 20-23 February, 2003.
What would you say to
that? But do not enter anything in your calendat yet! It is one option for a
follow-up of BBB 2002, which is being consulted now with Phare. Every detail
might change: the title, the date, even the city.
BBB 2002 report
The report has reached the point of no
return: has been given to the printer who promises to do his job by next week.
No need to wait till
then: from http://www.budobs.org/eu-conference.htm
you can download the pdf files of the report
on the sessions, the list of participants as
well as the biographic notes on the speakers and
presenters. A few days later you can have a second go: by then we shall
complete the collection, and learn how to keep all those nice Slavic, Romanian
etc. special letters in their original forms.
The book sectors in eastern Europe
We have nearly finished processing the
information gathered about the state of book sectors in the new democracies in
the year 2000, a job commissioned to BO by the Open Society Institue. The
remaining chapters of the report will be put on our site during the next two
weeks.
They will tell you that the huge geographical
span covered by the survey contains large differences in size and development.
Find some of the extremes: in 2000 in Russia more than 50 000 new titles were
published - 200 times more than in Tajikistan. East-central Europe proper (the
area to where BO has its basic mandate) is led by Poland with 14 000 kinds of
new books, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina sitting at the bottom of the list
with less than the 20th of this figure.
Counted differently, the same list is
topped by Estonia, where a new title was published for roughly every 500
citizen, followed by Slovenia (550), but also a new title got to less than 1000
Czechs in 2000; the same index was 2750 and 2900 for Poland and Russia.
The order is slightly different if we
take the number of copies. Czechs were 1st with 3.9 copies per head,
Estonians only 3rd, and Poles had a respectable 2.1 copies as well
(no data from Russia).
Sales
From all data, those
on sales are the most difficult to get - not only in publishing. Our figures
tell that Latvians spent the most on books in 2000: over 32 dollars each!
Hungarians and Estonians follow with about 14 dollars and Czechs remain below
$10.
Explanations?
Unreliable information? Czechs produce but do not buy? Latvian books are so
expensive?
One way ahead towards
explanations is improving the instrument. This is what we are working on and
hope to receive OSI`s backing for the next round, the survey on 2001.
Other tasks for summer
We shall prepare for
the re-newed systematic gathering of information on established systems of
providing grants to cultural projects and on the legal and administrative
conditions for cultural sponsorship and donations. East-central Europe will be
in focus, but just like earlier, for basis of reference, information will be
sought from regions areas as well.
Madrid, once more
The web site of the April
seminar on cultural sponsorship and donations is complete. With BO's record in
the subject (which was reflected in Ms Reding's opening speech
http://www.mecenas-eu.net/eng/discurso.html), we feel sorry to have missed the
event. However, there are papers that will be used later on, like the
comparison of the fiscal regulation in four countries: http://www.mecenas-eu.net/comun/eng_deduccion.doc;
or the proposal for obligatory sponsorship at http://www.mecenas-eu.net/comun/implementation.doc.
Colin Tweedy presented a few figures which deserve some more chewing: Germany
304.51 million €, Austria 35.84, Belgium 54.3, Spain 59.7, France 183, Ireland
12.2, Italy 205.7, UK 226.08, Sweden 24.04 (cultural sponsorship in 1998/99, http://www.mecenas-eu.net/comun/conferencia_tweedy_eng.doc
).
Use or abuse
Finally, an intriguing
piece, received through the good services of IFACCA Bulletin. A seminar is held
next week in Edinburgh on the use and abuse of comparative research in the
cultural sectors. Which applies to us? - being a comparative agency ourselves,
the title prompts us to do self-analysis. We shall watch out for the findings: http://www.dramaticonline.com/ifacca/web/conf/detail.asp?Id=900
.
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