Slovenia/ 8.3 Arts and cultural education  

8.3.1 Institutional overview

The National Programme for Culture has also recognised the need for a more active role of cultural policy in education. The major problems lie within higher education, as there are no study courses for important cultural professions. There is a special question on how to ensure that priority support is given to programmes and projects which can make up for the lack of professional training in the field of culture. Education for professionals that directly co-operate in the maintenance and restoration of cultural heritage do not exist in the present educational system. This is true for higher education and for secondary schools. Education is only provided through non-institutional training opportunities whereby professionals work under mentors, take part in special courses, seminars, workshops and additional education abroad. Museology, is not, at the present moment, an independent field of study, but only a subject in some Departments of the Faculty of Arts. The same is true for the study of conservation. There are only some possibilities to take course at the post-graduate level in some Faculties. A different situation exists in the field of librarianship, which has its own study course in the Faculty of Arts.

A problem which has arisen in the last couple of years is the lack of education for cultural managers in the fields of art and cultural heritage. At the moment, there is no under-graduate or post-graduate programmes in this field. Some subjects are taught at the Faculty of Social Sciences and in all three Art Academies. Progress was made in the field of restoration when an under-graduate course was introduced in 1996 (not all kinds of cultural heritage). A professional programme for carving and restoration of wooden objects was also introduced on the secondary school level.

The amount of financial support for scholarships and school fees provided by the Ministry of Culture, in 2005, was 770 833 euros (ca 120 students). The scholarships and school fees were provided for students in different fields of art and audiovisual culture, post-graduate study abroad and education for cultural professions in multimedia cultures, as art critics, in restoration, for translators of classic works of literature and humanism. Support for under-graduate studies abroad are only financed when there is no similar under-graduate programme in Slovenia.

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