Cultural policy objectives
The strategic objectives of cultural policy in Lithuania are part of the overall strategic planning framework, which is regulated by the Law on Strategic Governance adopted in 2020. According to this law, Lithuania has three national strategies – the State Progress Strategy, the National Security Strategy, and the Concept of the General Plan of the Territory – for the implementation of which strategic plans and programs are developed, involving the participation of all 14 ministries of the Republic of Lithuania. The State Progress Strategy is prepared by the State Progress Council, which includes representatives of all parliamentary parties, numerous experts, organisations, and citizens. The goals and aspirations presented in this vision for the country’s future go beyond the term of a single government or the aims of any one political force – the vision encompasses key long-term issues of national development.
In 2023, the Lithuanian Parliament adopted the State Progress Strategy, Lithuania 2050. This strategy replaced the previous one, Lithuania 2030, and continues the tradition of consistent strategic state governance. The strategy presents a future Lithuania as a mature democracy with transparent, strategic governance and active, civically engaged citizens who trust their state. The country aims to be a centre of global innovation, combining meaningful work with environmental sustainability. Internationally, Lithuania seeks to be a resilient and respected actor, promoting democratic values. Balanced regional development ensures equal access to services and a clean environment, making Lithuania a country people choose, value, and protect.
To implement the State Progress Strategy, the Government of Lithuania adopts long-term development plans. The National Development Plan of Lithuania for 2021-2030 sets ten strategic goals to be achieved over the next 10 years. The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture is mostly involved in the realisation of the fourth goal of the Plan, which is “to strengthen national and civic identity, increase the spread of culture and the creativity of society”. For realisation of this goal, Lithuanian Government adopted the 2021-2030 Culture and Creativity Development Programme, that is carried out by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania and entails 7 objectives: 1) to increase the capacity of cultural and creative industries (CCIs) and promote the development of new products and services based on creative content; 2) encourage the population to participate in cultural activities and contribute to the development of culture; 3) improve conditions needed for creation in Lithuania and increase the dissemination of Lithuanian culture abroad; 4) promote the integration of national minorities; 5) strengthen the relevance of historical memory in society; 6) revive the cultural and national heritage of public significance and increase its usage for the needs of the society; 7) increase the relevance of the Lithuanian language in the context of globalization and technology. The 2021-2030 Culture and Creativity Development Programme also entails measures, indicators and financing projections of the objectives implementation
Features of the cultural policy system
The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania is in charge of the following areas of culture: memory institutions (heritage, libraries, museums, archives), performing arts (theatre companies, concert halls, orchestras, etc.), visual arts (galleries, arts centres), media and information (press, radio, television), creative and cultural industries (design, architecture, publishing), copyright, and ethnic culture (cultural centres). The Ministry shapes, organises, coordinates and evaluates the policies in these areas, allocates appropriations to the state institutions, and implements several funding programmes. In its activities, the Minister relies on the advice of the Board of the Ministry of Culture and 18 Advisory Councils. To deal with individual important issues or recurring matters, such as various awards, competitions, etc, the Minister forms committees and commissions. In 2025, 21 such commissions and committees were operating under the ministry.
Cultural policy implementation bodies in the fields of arts, cinema and media are the Lithuanian Council for Culture, Film Centre and Media Support Fund. The Lithuanian Culture Institute presents Lithuanian culture and professional art abroad. These institutions allocate funding for arts, culture and media projects through calls for tender. They are relatively autonomous and make funding decisions based on expert judgment. The activity of these institutions is regulated by special laws that define their functions and the sources of their funds (see chapter 4.1.2).
The cultural heritage protection policy is mainly implemented by the Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture. The functions of the Department include maintenance and management of cultural properties, maintenance of accounting and control of cultural heritage, as well as presentation of cultural heritage to society. The Department also contributes to the formation and implementation of national policies in the protection of cultural heritage.
In general, Lithuania’s cultural policy system is centred in the Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for the formation, implementation, and oversight of cultural policy. The establishment of the Lithuanian Council for Culture, the Lithuanian Film Centre, and the Media Support Fund was intended to introduce horizontal decentralisation; however, their influence remains limited due to their modest financial capacity. The Lithuanian Council for Culture distributes about 10% of the Ministry’s total budget, and the Film Centre about 4.7%. The Media Support Fund is financed directly by the government; its budget amounts to only about 3.3% of the sum distributed by the Ministry and about 9% of the funding allocated to the national broadcaster. Although by establishing these institutions, the idea was to decentralise cultural policy and to create independent policy-making bodies of the “arm’s length” type, in practice, they function mainly as project-funding and administration bodies whose budgets depend directly on allocations from the Ministry and the government.
Background
1991 – 2000. Lithuanian cultural policy has undergone profound transformations since 1990, as Lithuania declared Independence from the Soviet Union. In 1991, the 3rd Lithuanian Government declared in its programme the aim to reform the cultural policy system and to base the new cultural policy “on the principles of freedom of expression, self-regulation of culture, openness of the national culture, modernity, democracy and decentralisation”. Democracy was understood in the document as self-government of a cultural community and freedom of expression. In practice, it meant the abolishing of the former regulation of artistic and cultural expression, support for the new self-emergent social structures of cultural community, and division of the decision-making powers between government and arts experts. The Government’s programme also postulated that “State regulation is meaningful only in the areas of education and heritage. The State refuses to regulate artistic and cultural expression; it will promote priority directions of cultural development and non-commercial art by financial means only”. The programme also declared the necessity to establish an arts foundation and allocate financial support for culture on the basis of expert evaluations. In the same year, the Ministry of Culture established the Arts and Culture Council and some other expert councils and commissions. However, they did not have the real political power and acted as advisory bodies only.
The next five years, Lithuanian cultural policy discourse was marked by active discussions about the Lithuanian “model” of cultural policy, particularly about the relationship and division of power between the Ministry and the cultural community. In 1996, the 7th Lithuanian Government organised the Lithuanian Cultural Congress that had to find a consensus of the cultural community and formulate the main cultural policy principles. The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture prepared the draft document of cultural policy principles for discussion in the Congress, and the Council of the Congress prepared an alternative document on the same subject. None of these documents, however, was adopted during the Congress. The cultural community found the principles proposed by the Ministry too conservative, as they did not make any significant institutional changes in the cultural policy system. The principles proposed by the Council of Congress, in opposite, were too radical and did not gain the acceptance of the participants of the Congress. Both sides, however, agreed on the need to establish a foundation for the support of culture. That was implemented in the same year. The Lithuanian Parliament established The Press, Radio and Television Foundation and, two years later, the Culture and Sports Foundation was established, which in 2007 was reformed into two separate foundations, i. e. the Culture Foundation and Sports Foundation. The budgets of the foundations, however, were very limited; therefore, they did not play any significant role in the financing of culture. The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture remained the most powerful and important institution in strategic and operational matters of cultural policy, so the overall system of cultural policy remained centralised.
The next four Governments did not try to reform the Lithuanian cultural policy model and attempted only to achieve consensus on the main cultural policy principles. In 2001, the 11th Government approved a programme document titled Provisions on Lithuanian Cultural Policy. The document defined goals and objectives of cultural policy, but did not include any changes to the cultural policy implementation mechanism. The institutional system of cultural policy remained the same, i. e. the Ministry of Culture remained the main body of cultural policy formation and implementation.
2001 – 2010. In the decade after the adoption of the mentioned provisions in 2001, the need for changing the cultural policy implementation mechanism grew. Artists and professionals of different cultural spheres demonstrated their discontent with the existing centralised model and financing of culture. Like in other Eastern European countries, the traditional/governmental/centralised financing mechanism seemed to be “the obstacle” that, once removed, would allow cultural life and the arts to flourish, fostering new forms of creative expression, excellence and diversity. The situation became especially tense within the Lithuanian professional theatre community. During the first decade of Independence, a number of highly professional private theatres emerged in Lithuania. Compared to state-funded theatre, the quality of their performances was similar or even higher, and they had achieved recognition from the best international theatre festivals. Since the state theatres received direct funding from the Ministry of Culture and private theatres had to earn their own living, they were forced to operate and compete under extremely uneven conditions.
In 2010, the 15th Lithuanian Government returned to the reform of the cultural policy system. The Ministry of Culture prepared the strategic document Lithuanian Cultural Policy Change Guidelines, which was approved by the Lithuanian Parliament. The Guidelines claimed that the “model of cultural policy implementation and its institutional character inherited from the soviet time was never essentially changed in Lithuania and cultural self-regulation was not ensured” and stated the need “to reform and democratise the governing of culture by further developing the self-regulation of the cultural sphere. … [For that purpose] It is necessary to: 1) make the cultural policy model more democratic, i.e. to separate policy formation from policy implementation and to follow the example of the Science Council by establishing the Arts Council”.
2011 – 2020. In the autumn of 2012, the Parliament of Lithuania adopted the Law on the Council for Lithuanian Culture. The Law defines the Council as a budget-financed institution under the Ministry of Culture that has these main functions: to finance culture and arts programmes, distribute grants and other types of support to culture and arts professionals, and monitor the culture and arts projects that are under implementation. The newly established Council took over the administration of the Culture Foundation. However, in 2021 this Foundation was abolished, and since then the funds of the Council have consisted of state budget finance allocated by the government (see chapter 2.1). According to the Law on the Council for Lithuanian Culture, the Council consists of 10 members and a chairman. The chairman of the Council is appointed by the Government. The members of the Council are elected in two rounds following the principle of proportional representation of all spheres of culture and arts, including all geographic regions. Both natural and legal bodies can delegate candidates to the first round of the elections. Out of them, 20 candidates are selected for the second round by a secret ballot cast by the voters delegated by culture and arts organisations. Out of the selected 20 candidates, the Minister of Culture selects 10 candidates to form the Council, that are submitted for the approval of the Government by following the principle of broad representation (more about the activity of the Council for Culture, see chapter 1.2.2).
The Lithuanian Council for Culture was established in 2013. One year earlier, in 2012, the 15th Lithuanian Government had established the Lithuanian Film Centre. The Film Centre replaced the Film Council, which had operated since 2002 as a collegial advisory body on film policy formation and film funding under the Ministry of Culture. The decisions of the Film Council on film funding were constantly criticised in the press because of the unclear assessment criteria and funding of projects that were related to the members of the Council. The newly established Film Centre started to operate more transparently, with clear procedures and criteria, but its decisions were criticised anyway, particularly by the Lithuanian Cinematographers’ Union because of the “overall direction of film policy”, since the Centre did not select some projects of eminent filmmakers for funding. At the end of 2013, the Minister of Culture re-established the Film Council as an advisory body under the Ministry. The Ministry and the newly established Film Council took the function of film policy formation, and the Film Centre remained as a funder for film projects and an administrative body (more about the activity of the Film Centre, see chapter 1.2.2).
The Lithuanian Cultural Policy Change Guidelines were the most important strategic document on cultural policy for the next 5 years. The Government adopted the Action Plan for the Implementation of Guidelines. Besides the aim to establish culture as a strategic direction of the state development, giving priority to the cultural policy and the establishment of the Council of Culture, the Plan included other important tasks and measures: to establish a quality evaluation system of cultural and artistic institutions linking institution funding to the results of its evaluation; to conduct research about the accessibility of culture by social, economic, geographical and other indicators; to draft legislation establishing tax incentives enabling the development of the Lithuanian film industry; to improve the process of accounting of immovable cultural heritage by ensuring its transparency and efficiency; and more. Many of the planned measures, however, were not implemented. In 2012, the Lithuanian Parliament approved the state progress strategy Lithuania 2030 and the Government passed The National Advance Programme for the years 2014-2020, which did not fully integrate the provisions of the Action Plan of the Implementation of Guidelines. In the new Programme, culture was treated as a horizontal priority that had to be implemented through the Inter-institutional Action Plan of the Horizontal Priority Culture. The Action Plan, however, was only partially successful, as not all implementing institutions were fully aware of the potential contribution of culture to other public policy objectives.
In 2018, being aware that the implementation of the plan did not lead to the needed consolidation of culture and other areas of public policy and the establishment of its strategic role, the Ministry of Culture prepared a new Lithuanian Cultural Policy Strategy for 2020–2030 that was approved by the Lithuanian Government in 2019. The Strategy was the first comprehensive long-term cultural policy strategic document since the restoration of the independence of Lithuania. The strategy was based on empirical data, situation analysis and experts’ evaluation of the current situation of culture.
In 2020, Lithuania adopted the Law on Strategic Governance that seeks to create and develop a results-oriented strategic management system integrating the processes of strategic planning, regional development and spatial planning, in order to ensure long-term and sustainable progress of the state, efficient planning and use of government finances. The Law classifies strategic planning documents into 4 levels. The top-level documents are the 3 state strategies – the Progress Strategy, the National Security Strategy, and the Concept of the General Plan of the Territory. All strategic plans and programmes for their implementation must be based on these strategies. Culture is the focus of the fourth goal of the National Development Plan of Lithuania for 2021-2030: “to strengthen national and civic identity, increase the spread of culture and the creativity of society”. The implementation of this goal and some other tasks of the Plan is carried out by the Ministry of Culture according to the 2021-2030 Culture and Creativity Development Programme (see cultural policy objectives).
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