Raluca Pop discusses on the „we are more” EU-wide campaign website about her experience as contributor to the advocacy efforts for culture in the next frame for EU structural and cohesion funds in Romania:
“I was personally engaged last year, from June to December, in the negotiations for the Structural Funds for culture in Romania for 2014-2020. I was the coordinator of the working group ‘Culture with a social and educational impact’, organised under the umbrella of the Consultative Committee for Culture, Tourism and National Heritage (Secretariat: Ministry of Culture). All in all, the experience showed the risks which endanger the efforts for advocacy for culture. The most important one is the lack of data about the cultural sector and cultural activity – from the state of cultural heritage to the number of cultural workers and the profile of cultural activities embedded in the school curricula. I also feel there is a lack of coordination and proper tuning of expectations of the presence of culture in the next frame of structural and cohesion funds, with the possibilities offered by the general, EU level policy objectives for 2014-2020. Many people ask for investments which simply cannot be targeted as such with EU structural funds. I am personally very worried also about the level of understanding of the economic, social, educational and cohesive potential of culture by other central and local public authorities. The latter has largely influenced the very low profile of culture in the draft version of the Partnership Agreement that Romania sent to the EU in late May 2013. In conclusion, the draft of the Partnership Agreement which was sent to the EC included only minor references to culture and no feedback or consultation with the cultural sector was organized since December 2013. We feel that we are being ignored, although we performed a lot of valuable work voluntarily for the working group and we were promised to be consulted during the whole process of negotiations. In the end, whatever culture might signify to the public administrations, it is the cultural organizations, artists, managers and cultural workers in general, who are the actors of culture in Romania, we deliver it and create it, and we have a right to be consulted and acknowledged as a partner for dialogue. This is something that public administration, be it local, regional, national or European, must always consider.”
Credits: Image on top: Culture Balloons by Newfrontiers – Found on Flickr (Creative Commons)