Two of the Compendium member states have recently experienced highly relevant changes in their national cultural policy development.
In Austria, the Ministry of Art, Culture, Public Service and Sport (BMKÖS) has published the “Federal Guidelines for Cultural Policy” as a result of the strategy process that has been underway since 2021. Based on the numerous discussions and events of recent years, the BMKÖS has defined eight fields of action for cultural policy: Innovation and digitalisation, fairness and social responsibility, internationalisation, audience and cultural mediation, ecology and sustainability, building culture and cultural heritage, financing culture and dialogue. The 20 cultural policy guidelines that form the core of the recently published paper were derived from these areas of action. They range from ‘Ensuring the freedom of art‘ to ‘Reaching new audiences‘ or ‘Enabling fair payment‘ to ‘Actively shaping the built environment‘.
In Estonia, the Cultural Endowment began granting creative work fees to artists in May 2024. While previously creative people could only apply for creative scholarships and grants, which were not accompanied by social and health insurance, the purpose of paying creative work fees is to enable a creative person to devote themselves to a specific creative activity or work, the purpose of which is to create a work subject to copyright or performing rights and to receive an appropriate fee for this work, as well as to receive social insurance. The recipient of those fees is also entitled to health insurance. The main aim of this change in cultural policy is to address the current lack of social guarantees, especially for freelance artists.
Comments are closed.