The “Strategy of Cultural Development – Croatia in the 21st Century”, drawn up in co-operation between the Ministry of Culture and a team of independent experts and accepted in the Croatian Parliament in early 2002, gave a detailed presentation of these goals and the necessary instruments to achieve them. One of the key goals of the Cultural Development Strategy has been the democratisation of culture, intended to increase active participation in culture and to popularise art and culture in schools and through the media. However, since then no action plans were made in order to implement the adopted strategy. The Cultural Development Strategy (Cvjetičanin and Katunarić (eds) 2001) defines culture as follows: “All forms of intellectual and artistic expression of symbolic social identity, belonging, behaviour and customs, and such industrial products, including the media, produced for spending leisure and shaping people’s attitudes”.
A new national cultural development plan is currently in preparation by the Ministry of Culture and Media that needs to be in line with the overall National Development Strategy 2030, which was presented by the government in 2020. The draft of the plan was put into public discussion before the presentation of the analysis of the cultural sector entitled ‘Review of the Cultural Development and Cultural Policies in the Republic of Croatia’ that has been in preparation since 2019 (Matanovac-Vučković et al (eds), 2022). It addresses the issue of cultural sustainability as a core concept in the elaboration of development of Croatian cultural policy in the global context. The report on the media sector and the report on the cultural and creative industries before and after COVID-19 have also been also prepared and presented by the Ministry as the background documents for the future National Plan. It is to be seen how the final version of the Plan that is planned for 2023 will address the issue of cultural sustainability.
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