3. Cultural and creative sectors
Serbia
Last update: September, 2018
In the past five years, the Serbian cultural heritage field has seen a significant opening and acceptance in international cultural circles. Archaeological sites, cultural heritage monuments, protection institutes and other heritage organisations have been active in the international scene and have been awarded and recognised by international actors.
In 2016, the first cross-border heritage site in the region has been inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List - Stećci Medieval Tombstone Graveyards. The successful inscription was made possible through the cooperation between the National conservation institutes of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro. Another international candidature to the WHL is under way for the part of Roman Limes located in Serbia which entails many important heritage sites along the Danube river.
The European Union delegation in Serbia has been active in supporting conservation works of the Golubac fortress. It supported the reconstruction with 6.5 million EUR as well as the relocation of traffic and the construction of the ring road and the visitor’s centre. The reconstruction ran from September 2014 to May 2016 and has turned Golubac into a tourist destination of that region.
In 2016, the Institute for the protection of cultural monuments of the city of Niš has won a Grand Prix EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award for the conservation study on the protection of stone village Gostuša near Pirot. In 2018, three projects from Serbia have been awarded the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award: Jelena Todorović and Biljana Crvenković for the Research and Cataloguing of the State Art Collection, Aranđelovac Municipality for the renovation of The Pavilion of Prince Miloš at the Bukovička Spaand the the Provincial Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments for preservation of Bač Fortress. The last one was awarded a Grand Prix. In 2018, the European Year of Cultural Heritage, many organisations from Serbia have also been supported as part of the special Creative Europe call – three projects (out of 29 supported in total) have leads from Serbia, while an additional 6 work with a Serbian partner.
Still, despite all the awards and acclaimed reception in the international cultural field, local museums, protection institutes, archives and libraries are faced with rigorous austerity measures which ban further employment in all public institutions. As employees age and retire, institutions across country are understaffed – thus burnouts, fatigue and misconducts are growingly a treat to the heritage field.
One of the most important issues of the cultural heritage system in Serbia is the problem of its financing. An open competition for financing cultural heritage projects was introduced in 2010. Competitions and public calls don’t have a systematic character, nor do they have clear financial criteria, thus, the impact on the cultural heritage system stays invisible.Since 2003, a total of EUR 200 million has been invested in cultural heritage in total, i.e. EUR 16.5 million on average a year. A study on cultural heritage institute network (2016) show that less than 6 million euros of public money is invested in heritage institutes network per year, which is a very problematic amount of funds for any normal functioning of heritage protection system, especially on the national level. Evidently, there is a low level of intersectoral cooperation between different ministries that support heritage protection projects as well as with international bodies. Projects supported by the government and international funds are partial, with a low level of impact on local communities or the heritage system. The local self-governments in Serbia have no fiscal capacity to take part in capital heritage projects: only up to two smaller projects (between EUR 100 000 and 250 000) received investments sporadically from the local level of government. All government levels have independent priorities in supporting heritage protection and there is no overall priority intervention list that can support cooperation and synergy in funding cultural heritage at the different government levels. The existing regulatory framework for heritage protection is also outdated and not harmonized with other laws recently adopted. In 2016, three task forces for writing new laws in heritage protection have been established by the Ministry of Culture. The Ministry produced draft version of new laws on heritage protection, but was not active in public discussions and the process of laws adoption. A new law on urban planning and construction has marginalized a lot of administrative jurisdictions of the cultural heritage institutes. A strong influence by the National alliance for local economic development on regulatory framework and other policies is evident since 2017 (new government appointment). In 2018, the National alliance for local economic development and their team created a new draft proposal for national heritage protection law, outside of any consultations with heritage professionals and other relevant cultural stakeholders.
Significant fluctuations of funds have been discernible year after year, which hinders the completion of projects. There is a lack of programme budgeting, therefore the financing of cultural heritage projects are not based on strategic priorities, but rather on available resources in the current year. The result is that the rehabilitation of a single site taking several years more than what is realistically attainable. Since 2015, the Standing Conference on Cities and Municipality (SKGO) started to build a cooperation network between heritage institutes and local municipalities and institutions. There were several conferences and trainings for local municipalities to understand the principles of sustainable protection and use of cultural heritage as well as cultural heritage’s role in local sustainable development. To solve the issues regarding the local financing of cultural heritage, programme budgeting of cultural heritage was introduced in 2015. The new system of planning the local public finance will ensure better prioritization of cultural heritage projects, planning strategic priorities of financing, evaluation and cooperation between different bodies responsible for this field.
An important issue in heritage policy is unsystematic tourism exploitation of these resources, where no investment is made in conservation, presentation or valorisation of heritage. Very often tourism projects were implemented without professional cooperation with heritage protection agencies. This approach of turning heritage monuments into consumer-oriented entertainment projects is known as a "Disneyfication", with a huge tourism destruction impact on heritage resources.
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This information will be published as soon as possible.
This information will be published as soon as possible.
Last update: September, 2018
In 2002, the Ministry of Culture set up a working group for the first time to examine policy issues regarding the development of culture industries. This issue has been very important because of Serbia’s future membership of the WTO and also because of the culture industries’ potential for future economic development in Serbia. A statement provided by the Ministry of Culture has been included in a Memorandum on Trade to the WTO. Between 2002-2017 there were several initiatives by the Ministry of Culture to create a national programme for creative industries. An example is the task force for creative industries in 2011, which proposed the programme “Creative Serbia” as a set of new policy measures for cultural and creative industries (CCIs). In 2012, the Ministry of Culture was no longer responsible for the implementation of this programme Until 2017, the CCIs have had a marginal place in official state level policy.
In 2017, the Premier’s office engaged a consultant from the United Kingdom in advising on creative industries policy. They also organised the high-profile conference “Creative Serbia: the future is creative” to promote its new creative policies and issued a series of statements which relate Serbia’s future with the development of creative industries. At the beginning of 2018, the Premier founded a special Council for Creative Industries. Most of those activities show that creative industries is used as a tool for political populism, self-marketing and the concealing of unsuccessful measures of economic policy. The huge media campaigns and the attention which follow those activities created a public image that creative industries are the new instrument for fixing most economic and cultural problems of Serbia.
Despite that, creative industries, mostly design, IT, gaming are experiencing a steady growth. Several studies have shown the different socio-economic impacts of CCIs.
In 2014, WIPO supported the Institute for protection of intellectual property in Serbia to produce research on the copyright industries in Serbia. The aim of this research is to present the economic contribution of the copyright industries in Serbia as well as to analyse the intellectual property framework and its influence on the copyright industries’ development in Serbia. Based on this study, new amendments on the Intellectual Property Law were prepared. The UNESCO Institute for statistics supports the pilot study on measuring the economic contribution of CCIs in Serbia in 2015 to explore the possibility of harmonizing the cultural statistics in this filed. The Institute for study in cultural development implemented the project “UNESCO culture and development indicators” in 2016 and produced several indicators for measuring the impact of the cultural field on the national development.
In 2016, the CIs comprise of 6.841 enterprises and 13.697 entrepreneurs. CIs are predominantly composed of small and micro enterprises (23,8%) and entrepreneurs (67,5%). The creative industries sector is characterized by a large number of micro organisations with less than 3 employees.
The contribution of the creative industries to the Serbian economy and job creation can be seen in direct economic impact (primary and secondary economic impact). In 2016, the total economic impact of the creative industries in Serbia was 8.8 % of the total employment and 10% of the total Gross Value Added (GVA). Depending on sub-sectors in the creative industries, the average growth rate of employment was 5,5%, while the GVA growth rate was between 0.5% and 10.8%.
Table 1: Economic impacts of Creative industries in Serbia, in EUR, 2016
Economic indicator | Primary impact | Secondary impact | Total economic impact of creative industries |
---|---|---|---|
Formal employment full time | 79.189 | 73.724 | 152.913(8.8%) |
Contribution to Gross Value Added (GVA), real price 2002 | 3,3% | 7.5% | 10,8% |
Source: Database for creative industries, 2017 Creative Economy Group
IT, software, film and video represent the most important employment groups with on average 32% of the total number of employed persons in CIs. There were 74.272 creative class occupations in Serbia in 2016. Two occupational groups that absorb the majority of the creative workforce are publishing and music, performing and visual arts with the share of 40% in total of the creative class occupations.
CIs businesses are very concentrated, with more than 70% of the business located in Belgrade. Outside of urban centres, CCIs play a very important role in cultural life. The mapping of rural creative entrepreneurship in two regions (Pirot and Kikinda) show a very strong impact of those activities on protecting cultural diversity, empowering women and creating a vibrant cultural life. Unfortunately, rural creative industries are outside of the interest of the government, which mostly focuses on “big deal and business” and fast economic results.
In 2016, the total export of CCIs goods was 356 million US dollars, while the export of CCIs services was 370 million US dollars. The average growth rate of the Serbian export of creative goods and services was 8.75% per year (2010-2016), while the most dynamic average annual export growth rates were in the area of the new media, crafts and publishing, gaming and IT. The leading export companies in CCIs are film company “Work in Progress”, G-THECH (gaming), PSTECH (software), Universal media, Grey worldwide, New moment (advertising), Westum and EXECOM (e commerce) and PINK International (media).
There are very limited measures and strategies which support the CCIs’ growth, especially at the local level. These kinds of policy measures are still in the embryonic stage.
In 2016-2017, several trainings for local municipality representatives were provided with the aim to learn how to integrate culture and creative industries in a sustainable development. The trainings were based on the principals of the UNESCO Convention on protection and promotion of cultural diversity. More than 210 local representatives are educated through this programme and strengthening to work on local strategies for the development of CCIs and to promote cultural diversity.
In the field of the creative industries business, there are several ad hoc programmes for film professionalisms, media and visual effects and creative entrepreneurs. All of those programmes are project based and without continuity. In 2016, the government starts with a programme of prequalification for unemployed people to work in the IT industry. However, this programme offers a very basic level of knowledge for web programming or other basic IT skills.
In the last few years, the opening of several co-working spaces across the country has started. These creative hubs and collaborative platforms gather freelance professionals from the fields of design, IT, gaming industries, as well as freelance cultural managers, social entrepreneurs and curators. While Belgrade is seeing the proliferation of such spaces and some specialization (Nova Iskra is a design hub, Gnezdo for young entrepreneurs, InCentar for social entrepreneurship), co-working spaces in other cities are generally gathering freelancers, as well as some employees from culture or/and creative industries (BeeHome in Subotica, Pionirska from Novi Sad, Coworking Zrenjanin, etc.).
Please find the available information on this subject in 3.5.1.
Please find the available information on this subject in 3.5.1.
Please find the available information on this subject in 3.5.1.
Please find the available information on this subject in 3.5.1.
Please find the available information on this subject in 3.5.1.