Moldova/ 8.4 Amateur arts, cultural associations and civil initiatives  

8.4.2 Cultural houses and community cultural clubs

The network of local cultural institutions includes 1 223 cultural houses, located both in urban and rural communities. Although 646 of them are in need of major overhaul and 136 need major structural repairs, they still managed to organise over 66 000 cultural activities, of which 19 500 were for children and youth. Cultural houses were built as special projects for producing cultural events, each having concert halls with 200 – 1 000 seats and rooms for rehearsals for artistic (mostly amateur) groups. Most of the cultural houses situated in rural communities include rooms for public libraries. The Ministry of Culture is only involved in monitoring their activity. The funding sources of houses of culture are the local budgets, which are complimented with allocations from the central budget, calculated per capita, at 5 MDL (EUR 0.3) for each community resident. It is obvious that this funding is extremely insufficient and unequal. This method of calculation impedes, from the outset, the localities with a small population.

The State Programme "Moldovan Village 2005-2015" includes MDL 300 million for the capital renovation of 118 Houses of Culture. In 2007, 12 Houses of Culture were renovated in different districts of Moldova. The share of investment projects within this programme amounts to approximately MDL 135 million.

Problems appear because of local councils which re-direct the funds toward other areas that are considered to be of bigger concern.

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