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A memo sent to correspondents,
friends and acquaintances of The Budapest Observatory (BO) in
March 2002
Dear Colleagues,
Most of the items in
this memo are issues covered before and revisited during the last few weeks.
European Cultural Foundation
Last year, in the
August and November memos the web site and the newsletter of a (joint) ECF
project were mentioned (Policies for Culture). Now I paid a thorough visit to http://www.eurocult.org and was impressed
by it: simple, informative (decorated cleverly with small photo inserts). This
refers above all to the section with probably the highest number of hits:
funding. Cultural operators from east and central Europe (especially from
south-eastern countries) will find it worth visiting. I did not realise earlier
how strong the cooperation with local Soros agencies is - or is it a recent
development?
Curiously, once you
are at a lower level of, say, http://www.eurocult.org/programmes.html,
you cannot find a lift to take you back to the reception level (home).
Info chain
Our attention was
called to changes in ECF Amsterdam funding by Mate from Unesco Paris, who got
news from Isabelle at ENCATC Copenhagen, who had received it from Rod and
Sheena at International Intelligence on Culture London, and I forwarded the
file to fellow CIRCLE board members all azymuths.
How different it was
ten years ago, in the clumsy fax age. Or twenty years ago manipulating with
heat photocopy, envelope and postage. Or seventy years ago...
But Agnes of the European Council of Artists is just telling me
that they dug out documents of civil initiatives of European artist from the
1930s, which appear timely and actual even today. How did they manage to bring
such papers together under those prehistoric circumstances?
EU advocacy
Among ECF goals we were pleased to read: "It is
important that the cultural sector is heard during the process of European
integration. Whether EU enlargement or EU reform is being
discussed, culture needs to feature prominently on the European agenda. The ECF
is interested in building partnerships with organisations which share these
objectives."
How close to the aims
of the February conference!
Bigger, better,
beautiful
While
composing this memo I made a quick check just to find out that our partners, so
brilliantly efficient in preparing and running the conference, have not
surmounted yet the difficulties of editing the final huge list of participants
for the purposes of www.bbb.kulturpont.hu, the conference site. Undisclosed list of
participants?
Easter
may bring about miracles. Also during the 50 days to pass before Whitsun, the
printed report must be accomplished.
Books sector survey
Almost every other day
we put new pieces on www.budobs.org/osi.htm
about the Open Society Institute survey.
This is an extensive
exercise which takes up substantial energies measured in time and money
(respondents, administrators, evaluators...), although it is no classical
sociological or statistical survey. Methodologically it is rather like a poll
with one selected informant per country. Regardless of the level of exactness,
findings are symptomatic.
Distances
In the Baltic
republics 10 to 20 thousand inhabitants are reported to be served by a bookshop
on the average. In the Caucasus or Central Asia the same number is near or
beyond 200 thousand!
If a Polish or Latvian
university professor spends his (her) entire salary on scholarly books
published in his country, he can purchase over 100. A colleague in Slovenia
or Slovakia less than 50. In
Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan below 20.
We used to be very
conscious about the function of the words uttered on a stage, printed in a
poem, or a visual effect in a painting when this was done in a totalitarian
state. Are we conscious enough about the different effects of arts between
circumstances where people in the audience (and of course the artists
themselves) work 5 minutes for a daily paper like a professor in Czech Republic
or Latvia; or 60 minutes like in Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan; or even more like in
Tajikistan or in today's Serbia? Not to speak of other European societies.
Higher degree from cultural policy
MA or Professional
Doctorate in Cultural Policy... largely through distance learning but also
'hybrid' in so far as it would probably offer a flexible combination of on line
teaching materials, hard copy reading dossiers, set texts, face to face
teaching in intensive 'blocks' (Summer Schools and/or Winter Schools, and/or
weekend short courses, etc)...
These lines were
copied from the message received from Nottingham. For more, see http://human.ntu.ac.uk/cppru
or send a 'keep me informed' e-mail to
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