City Councils, created according to the Law of 2007, which gave the status of “city” to municipalities with more than 100 000 inhabitants, representing economic, geographic and cultural centres of the wider region. This status created 24 cities but only 4 have important cultural functions: Belgrade, Niš, Kragujevac, and Novi Sad. Those cities are key partners in developing cultural policy and facilitating participation in cultural life including maintaining a diversified network of cultural institutions such as: theatres, libraries, museums and taking care of free-lance artists. The City Council of Belgrade has founded some of the most important international festivals (e.g. BITEF, FEST, and BEMUS) and cultural institutions which are often of importance for the whole Serbian territory, e.g. the Theatre Museum.
Municipalities (local self-governments) are developing local cultural policies to stimulate participation in cultural life, amateur activities and local cultural institutions and civil initiatives. In Serbia, there are 165 municipalities (out of whom 22 are municipalities under the authority of the cities of Belgrade and Nis), which usually consist of a city with 10 to 15 neighbouring villages (plus, there are several municipalities in Kosovo which rely on funds from Serbia for cultural and other activities, heritage protection, etc. such as Velika Hoča, Gračanica, Kosovska Mitrovica and Leposavić).
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