Cities and municipalities finance programmes of local community cultural centres and public educational centres, which are the only venues for art and culture in many smaller cities. The network of these community cultural centres is fully decentralised and the level of their involvement in cultural life as well as their ability to organise and/or host cultural and artistic programmes varies greatly from one city to the other depending on their development level. The biggest network of community cultural centres exists in the City of Zagreb. New initiatives have been made to revitalise these centres, especially with the help of EU funds (see chapter 2.6).
The Ministry of Culture and Media and the cities financially support theatres for children, youth and puppet theatres, registered either as public institutions or private companies. Most of these theatres also have studios for young actors. A number of NGOs develop cultural education programmes for children and pupils, which are developed as a part of their regular programmes.
An important role in promoting participation in music for the younger population is played by the ‘Jeunesses Musicales Croatia’ (HGM), a member of the ‘Jeunesses Musicales International’. One of their programmes is ‘cultural card’, which facilitates young people (aged 14 to 30) to have discounts in theatres, museums, concerts etc. ‘Music in the Neighbourhoods’ is another programme that HGM runs in cooperation with the City of Zagreb, with the aim of introducing classical music to primary school children.
Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC) continually supports programmes of film literacy that mainly consist of out-of-school activities while also being partner in the ‘Media literacy’ project of Agency for Electronic Media (AEM) and UNICEF.
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