Croatia/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates  

4.2.6 Culture industries: policies and programmes

The culture industries in Croatia have not been recognised as a specialised field of cultural development. They are identified within the established cultural creativity areas like music, film, audiovisual, etc. and supported through regular subsidies of the Ministry of Culture and local communities. In October 2008 the first attempt to support culture industries as a specialised field of cultural production was launched by the Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy, Labour and Entrepreneurship. The competition for funds to cover the costs of technological equipment, administrative and office expenses etc. was opened and over 450 cultural entrepreneurs applied to the call. Two million HRK (approx. 280°000 euro) were distributed to over 70 cultural companies and organisations. The Ministry continued this project in 2009.

The government, and in some cases local and regional authorities, are subsidising book production, music production and the recording and film industries (see  chapter 5.3.6). The government announced in 2004 that it is preparing a reform of state support for the culture industries including new policies for books, film and new media. Some innovations were introduced as a consequence of this proposed reform, such as bursaries for writers and translators and fixed book price regulations in the form of an Agreement between publishers and relevant ministries.

The culture industries are statistically not transparent nor are they perceived, by the public, as a profit-driven sector. However, some sectors such as publishing or film and music distribution and production are almost entirely privatised and generate funds from a variety of sources including public funding, sponsorship but also direct investment and their own income. The products of domestic culture industries are mostly distributed and consumed in the domestic market with the exception of pop-music and soap-operas, which are successfully exported throughout the region. Films also find their way to international audiences (mainly through festivals) and there are a few writers whose works are translated and distributed internationally. Liberalisation of the audio-visual market and the presence of private broadcasters on the Croatian market will, to a certain extent, boost the domestic audio-visual production which includes both the advertising sector but also independent productions (mostly entertainment programmes).

Lack of appropriate statistics for this sector makes it impossible to assess the turnover or employment figures for most culture industries in Croatia, but it is evident that employment in the sector has been growing constantly in the last 10 years, as shown in Jurlin (2008: 127-128) (see  chapter 9.1).

There are some attempts to design local strategies for the promotion of culture industries, an example being the city of Split where a group of researchers from the University of Split undertook a mapping exercise and made some strategic proposals for further development of creative industries in the city.