3. Civil society keyholders and the private sector?
When answering this question, please be aware of different levels (national, regional, local). Please use 1-3 pages (5001500 words)
Are there relevant youth organisations in your country? Yes
If yes, what extent do these organisations have and do they carry out culture-related activities (for
example youth passes of discount to entities, youth culture festivals, training courses etc.)?
The national and regional level are occupied by organization for the youth, the real youth
organizations are usually only on local level. Small and financially unsupported local youth
associations and organizations (such as Literature Triangle, EOSOF, Association of Independent
Young Talents etc.) are constantly trying to get established. These organizations are explicitly
appearing out of the need for active participation of young people into creative artistic processes.
Arts in modernized and improvised new forms are constantly under construction. Creativity and
freedom of expression are usually the creed of the participants.
However, these organizations are usually weakly structured, with fluctuating membership mass
and their projects most often include voluntary and non-budgetary activities. Moreover, rather than
not their main problem is the lodging of the organization. They lack offices and finances for their
registration procedure. There are neither state subsidies nor opportunities for funding from the
businesses or other private sector players (international organizations, foundations etc.) for groups
of young people. In some cases such groups orient to become youth clubs under the chitalishte,
but nowadays it is not very popular practice because of impoverished old infrastructure of the
chitalishte. Moreover, they loose their freedom and independence and have to obey to the internal
chitalishte rules and if the youth organization is too innovative it is difficult to fit the traditional
chitalishte scheme because of the elderly employees old fashioned management approach.
Local youth organizations are often closed down in one to two years time or are taken over by
other organizations that are youth oriented but lack youth quorum. Few of them, such as the
Association of Independent Young Talents survive and eventually manage to grow on regional
level. But on the way forward they are forced by circumstances to change their status, name and
main focus often due to need of flexibility with regards to mid-terms opportunities for funding. Thus
it is difficult for them to capitalize on their past experience and to keep a stable and consistent
membership mass.
Are there any alternative or independent cultural youth movements (for example reclaim
the streets or others)? Yes
Are these active movements?
Interesting phenomenon is that the youth organizations that appear under the political parties and
under the international organizations in Bulgaria all show high interest in cultural topics.
These organizations receive certain support from the political or international entities in terms of
premises for leading their activities and minimal support for a core set of group activities. Though
differing in their core activities however, all of these ‘dependent’ youth organizations tend to often
express in their missions or through their project proposals the cultural aspect of their claims for
access to civil and political life in the country. Unfortunately, these claims could be interpreted also
under the ‘cultural diplomacy trend’ in the political and diplomatic elite of the country.
Whichever the case with the initial motivation of their claims, there is a clear tendency of interest
(stimulated, genuine or both) among these young people towards the issues of access to culture.
And this interest tries to find its ways to transform into active position.
Please describe briefly the impact that civil society organisations and movements have in
your opinion in fostering access to culture for young people.
There are three different levels of involvement and reaction of civil society into the matters of
access to culture. Some agents try to provide this access, others are involved with raising the
awareness for need of such an access while third entities are focused mainly on research over the
issues of cultural policy, among other access to culture. Below are three examples of such nongovernmental private agents.
A successful access-to-culture point is the Euro-Bulgarian Cultural Centre (EUBCC) existing in
Sofia and working in close cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, this involving itself in initiatives
on national level, though providing services on local level in Sofia only. The EUBCC is an
information point for culture related EU funding opportunities; it tries to develop a library on this
topic. Moreover, the EUBCC runs its own boutique cinema which shows mainly European cinema
(French, German, Spanish etc.) and modern art masterpieces at considerably low price tickets.
The EUBCC hosts one of the most reputable bookshops in Sofia – Helicon, as well as its own
gallery space where free exhibitions are permanently organized as well as small cultural events
and occasionally debates on culture.
A prevailingly awareness oriented activity supposes organization of debates, seminars and policy
open discussions between political level and stakeholders. Such a debate centres on national and
regional level combined with access to culture services on local level is the Red House, Sofia. The
Red House organizes trainings, symposia and debates on cultural policy issues between different
stakeholder groups. This main activity is combined with exhibition halls and theatrical performance
opportunities. The pricing at the Red House however is not that preferential and oriented towards
the youth. It is rather thematically oriented towards representing the youth culture and trends.
A research and forum for access to independent cultural policy debate was established in 2008
under the name ‘Cultural Technological Park’ (CTP). CTP is an alliance of the twenty top
researches on culture and cultural policy issues in the country. They aim at identifying and
elaborating the problematic issues in this field in an environment free of political pressure and
interests. Independent and informed political evaluation and recommendations are the target of
the entity.
Is the private sector active in your country in activities related to promoting access to
culture? Yes
If yes, what would be the main forms of fostering access (festivals, cultural services,
training, private media, shows, etc.)
The private sector also plays a role, though smaller than the public one, in the culture and youth
issues. It is mainly in the form of NGO that the private sector engages itself with the topic culture
and youth.
A remarkable case of an NGO for work with young people on national and international level is the
‘Banner of Peace’ NGO. It strives to ensure opportunities for international cross-cultural crossborder dialogue. The NGO is a legally transformed ancestor of the Children’s Assembly ‘Banner of
Peace’ initiative undertaken by Lyudmila Jivkova in the 80es of the twentieth century. The ‘Banner
of Peace’ has always followed a very clear mission of ensuring opportunity for cultural dialogue
through arts and cultural activity of children as well as aesthetic and ethical education for children
in ‘unity, creativity and beauty’, as the motto of the Children’s Assembly initiative was. The activity
of this NGO is to organize biannual meetings of children from all over the world. They gather for a
cultural festival where they participate through artistic performances that express their culture of
origin. The festival culminates in the ringing of the bell of each country simultaneously. The bells
are situated at the Monument of Peace (also inherited as an infrastructure and concept from the
Assembly of Children period organized by Ludmila Jivkova).
Though its current President, Jeni Jivkova, is a personality with a rich political and artistic portfolio,
nowadays even this NGO struggles with deep financial difficulties to carry its activities on regular
basis. Therefore, its activity in the democratic period tends to be rather sporadic than continuous.
The business oriented private sector remains highly indifferent. Exceptions are a few cases of
attempts of banks to organize their corporate social responsibility through culture related activities.
Please mention some relevant agents/entities of the private sector that foster access to
culture of young people?
An interesting case is the role that foreign cultural institutes play in the access to culture for young
people.
Usually, such institutes have rich libraries and are very active in organizing cultural events and
providing different kind of material and immaterial stimulation of youth participation in activities
related to the particular culture the institute/centre represents (French Institute, British Council,
Goethe Institute etc.). Such institutes have usually also regional representative offices. They are
quite popular with the strata of young people belonging to the highest level of educational
institutions, mainly language schools on the particular language. Such foreign institutes, centres
are also active in offering language courses, which are highly popular among the young people in
Bulgaria (ex. The French Cultural Institute in Bulgaria).
There are also cases of policy for direct cooperation between the cultural information
centres/institutes and local youth organizations. This was for years the case of the Hungarian
Cultural Institute in Bulgaria while his Director was the Bulgarian Philology Professor Georg Sondi.
The cooperation between the Hungarian Cultural Institute and the youth organizations at that
period of the Institute was characterized by providing space for exhibitions, stage for performing
arts activities as well as support for achieving visibility of the youth activities by incorporating these
activities as part of the communication policy of the institute which was very well developed and
included private radio programs, shows and radio cultural info bulletins etc.