Regional Culture Conference Kicks off Next Week

The event, entitled “The Balkans, Media and Culture - Time for Change”, will be held on April 20, 2010. It will be implemented by the Balkan Investigative Regional Reporting Network and its partners, and funded by the Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans (SCP).

The conference will be the opening event for the BICCED project, which aims to build a network of journalists and cultural organisations from the region, to focus on common cultural policy issues with the aim of reaching both the wider public and policy makers, and to contribute to the change and development of cultural policies both locally and regionally.
 
Next Tuesday's event will help in the preparation of an editorial strategy and the establishment of links between cultural organisations, experts and journalists from across the region, and several participants will be invited to form an advisory board, whose role will be to provide input into editorial strategy at annual meetings over the project's three-year life cycle.
 
Among the participants of the conference will be representatives of the Ministry of Culture of Macedonia, the Swiss Embassy/Swiss Cooperation Office in Skopje and the Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans, as well as approximately 20 representatives of cultural institutions/organisations from the region, and ten journalists selected for the first year of the project implementation.
 
The first part of the conference (Regional Cultural Policy – Exploring the Challenges), which will be open to media, will give a general overview of cultural policies in the region and the main problems facing cultural organisations. The second part of the conference will be closed to the public and will consist of two moderated brainstorming sessions on editorial and networking strategy.
 
Speakers at the conference include Professor Primo Shllaku (Observatory of Culture, Tirana), Nihad Kresevljakovic (Festival MESS, Sarajevo), Vesa Sahatciu (Art critic, Pristina), Zlatko Teodosievski (Nova linija/Compendium, Skopje) and Hristina Mikic (Lecturer at the University of Belgrade and the Higher School for Business Studies Novi Sad/Compendium, Novi Sad).
 
Among the participants of the conference are Piro Misha (publisher, Tirana), Mladen Bundalo (artist, Tac.ka, Prijedor), Aliriza Arënliu (Dokufest, Prizren), Darka Radosavljevic-Vasiljevic (Remont, Belgrade), Silvia Drazic (Art Clinic/Initiative Za kulturne politike, Novi Sad), Robert Alagjozovski (cultural operator, journalist and art critic, Skopje), Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski (Lokomotiva, Skopje), as well as representatives of several other cultural institutions and organisations from Skopje.
 
Guests participants include Dea Vidovic (Kulturpunkt, Zagreb), who will present Croatian experiences in networking in order to make changes in cultural policy, and Veronika Ratzenböck (Kultur.macht Europa, Wien) as observer.