Croatia/ 8.4 Amateur arts, cultural associations and civil initiatives  

8.4.2 Cultural houses and community cultural clubs

Cultural centres are mostly established by local authorities or run by NGOs on the local (city or municipal) level. There is a growing number of such centres (especially in small cities) involved in different aspects of cultural lives from traditional amateur arts activities to new media (see also chapter 4.2.11). A Network of the open community learning centres (Zajednica pučkih otvorenih učilišta / Association of Community Centres) consists of community cultural and educational centres offering educational programmes for children, youth or adults and cultural programmes. All of these centres are mostly funded by local authorities but there is no data available on the state level that would give some indication of their penetration, impact and overall budgets. In smaller towns these centres are very important as sometimes they are the only points of cultural activities.

In total, according to the Statistical Yearbook 2009, in 2005/2006 there were 153 institutions that belonged either to public open universities, homes of culture, cultural centres or to other types of institutions / companies, and they are spread evenly around the country. In the season 2008/2009, this number increased to 217, as data from the Statistical Yearbook 2010 shows (CSS, 2010: 511), which is a substantial increase.

Your Comments on this Chapter?