image2 31.01.2018

Results of the EU-Eastern Partnership Culture and Creativity Programme in Belarus

2 years of the EU-Eastern Partnership Culture and Creativity Programme in Belarus. What are the results?

For the last 2 years the number of discussions about culture in the EU-Eastern Partnership countries increased by 20%. The EU-Eastern Partnership Culture and Creativity Programme launched in 6 Eastern Partnership countries in 2015 shares these results with us.

The Programme was aimed at supporting culture and creativity sector, conducting practical research, encouraging new strategies and reforms, providing trainings for the modernization of the cultural sector, offering opportunities for international cultural cooperation and increasing understanding of the role of culture in social and economic development.

What EU-Eastern Partnership Culture and Creativity Programme has done for Belarus?

In May 2017 Create IT Forum - Technologies for Creative Future - was organized. Leaders in the sphere of culture and technologies discussed how to establish support and cooperation system for the professionals in the field of culture and creative industries, business, engineering and IT. Around 200 people visited the public event.

12 local partners has taken part in the event, among them Virtual Reality Gallery, ECLAB (European Colleague for Liberal Arts), Mental Force Festival and Imaguru Business Club. 25 thematic studies have been presented. Ms. Margarita Lazarenkava, one of the Create IT Forum organizers, registered in Belarus a new NGO called Creative Belarus, which is meant to support creative sector in Belarus and to continue the work of the Culture and Creativity Programme. Cherdak Media Hub was opened in Svietlahorsk in the result of Creative towns and regions project.

Instruments

Creative towns and regions is the project of the EU-Eastern Partnership Culture and Creativity Programme. 6 regional towns from each Eastern Partnership country have taken part in the project. Svetlahorsk was one of them. You can find the answer to the question how a small town can unleash its creative potential in the report following the link here.

Young cultural managers, who took part in the Programme, prepared the analysis reports on cooperation of culture and IT and the curator’s role in the theater.

You can also find the study about Cultural Heritage of Belarus: challenges and recommendations on the Culture and Creativity website.  Stsiapan Stureika, the author of the study and European Humanities University professor, has conducted more than 30 expert interviews, analyzed state authorities and culture agencies, NGOs and non-formal initiatives in Minsk, Hrodna, Brest, Mscislaŭ, Niasviz and Ašmiany. You can read the study following the link here.

We offer a manual with 30 best examples of renovations and cultural centres created at the abandoned factories, railway stations and even ships.  Peter Lényi, the author of the manual, collected 123 stories and interviews, where activists dwell on challenges, problems and advantages of renovations. We have translated the book into all the languages of the Eastern Partnership countries.  The manual is available here.

David Parrish book Suits and T-Shirts (A Guide to the Business of Creativity) is translated into Belarusian and published in Belarus. The book will be available online soon. In the book you will learn how to make a creative idea and a cultural product profitable.

The opportunities offered by the Culture and Creativity website will be available regardless the end of the Programme in Belarus. It means that you will have at your disposal 15 online courses for cultural managers in 8 languages, data and facts on social and economic benefits of culture, 500 useful resources for searching financing, partners and learning opportunities.

In three years the Programme organized 252 events, published 870 articles, got more than 30 thousand subscribers in social media.

The Programme experts prepared recommendations for the cultural sector in Belarus and answered the question, - what is necessary to encourage and to improve the development of the cultural sector?

To ease administrative and financial barriers,

To improve cross-sectoral cooperation,
To engage the audience,
To develop the legal basis,
You can find more here