Training in cultural policy and management: international ... - Encatc

Survey on institutions and centers ...
Survey on institutions and centers providing training for
cultural development personnel in Eastern Europe, Russian
Federation, Central Asia and the Caucasus Region.
Milena Dragicevic Sesic
Professor,
Center for Professional Development and Consulting in Arts, Culture and Media,
Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
Educational and training institutions in Central and Eastern Europe & Central Asia are facing important
new challenge; the transition process has not yet been accomplished (neither for the countries nor for
the institutions) but new demands are already at hand. For evidence, consider the Bologna process 1
and Lisbon council 2 , where European Ministries of Education decided to harmonize national structures
in higher education (ECTS 3, mobility of students and educators, two cycle system, interdisciplinarity,
employability, quality assurance, etc). Adding to the pressures is the difficult switch from a completely
state-supported framework to a mixed financing system, where a small but crucial part of the
financing that guarantees development and quality of university teaching has to come from students
themselves. Desetatisation of public educational services is questionable in countries whose
economies are still in transition, where the minimum degree of sustainability has not been reached,
and where a majority of the population exists near the poverty line.
The turbulent times in Central and Eastern Europe have affected numerous cultural and educational
policy issues in the last twelve years. Three periods can be identified according to those changes:
The return to “national” cultural values (identity questioning) and the rejection of communist tradition
(even rejection of the institutions and curricula created under communism, regardless of their real
meaning and impact 4 );
The will to catch up to European trends and strive for modernization during a period of acceptance of
proposed models (Council of Europe – Mosaic, PHARE trainings, NGO training development, etc.); and
The revitalization and reform of curricula during a period of creation of “joint ventures” in education,
introduction of ECTS system, exchange, etc.
1
For the higher education area, the DG Education and Culture of the European Commission launched
the so-called Bologna process, aimed at the harmonization of the architecture of the European Higher
education system’. The Bologna declaration, signed in 1999, was adopted by a majority of European
countries and the process stated to take form inside the respective educational systems.
2 One of the aims of the Lisbon Special European Council (23 and 24 March 2000) was to inverse the
relationship between the level of education and rate of unemployment. The Council set a quantitative
objective for 2010: By the end of the decade, the number of 18-to-24-year-olds possessing only a
basic secondary education should be cut in half.
3 ECTS – European Credit Transfer System, a model of validation of student learning which enables
students to go from one university to another even during undergraduate education.
4 For that reason the Department of Organization/management of cultural activities had been closed in
Rijeka (Croatia) at the Faculty for Industrial Pedagogy.
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