STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

3.1.6. Slovenia
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Street Artists in Europe
Street arts first appeared in around 1975, in particular as a result of the organisation in Ljubljana
of two special international festivals: the spring festival (held four times from 1979 to 1983) and
the summer festival in Metalka (held three times from 1986 to 1988). They received wider
recognition after the Ana Desetnica Festival in the 1990s.
Although there is no specific policy line geared to them, street arts are regarded as a fullyfledged
art form, accessible to the public and deserving of support: ‘Street theatre is considered
one of the performing arts, together with drama, dance, puppets etc.’, according to Goro
Osojnik, President and Programming Director of the Ana Desetnica international street arts
festival in Ljubljana.
At national level, the government has supported street arts since 1978 through the Ministry of
Culture. Although subsidies remain small, they do cover many street arts companies. The
support mechanism is based on an annual invitation to tender. Two types of aid can be allocated:
for production and post-production, and for supporting dissemination abroad. Since 2003, the
Ministry of Culture has been supporting the twelve largest independent cultural producers and
organisers on the basis of a three-year agreement. The invitation to tender is renewed every
three years (the next one will be issued in 2007). At local level the municipalities can also
intervene, although that depends very much on their size.
Today those funding schemes are on the increase and companies and young artists no longer
hesitate to apply. Street performances are well attended by the public and becoming more
visible in the media. Street arts have become a real priority for local authorities, as in the case of
the urban region of Ljubljana for the period 2007-2013. One of the projects is to set up a
network of cultural producers from different fields of art, such as street arts, puppets, literature
and books, music, etc.
3.2. Non-specific cultural policy or poor cultural support
3.2.1. Portugal
At a time when street arts began to flourish in most of western Europe (apart from Spain), in
Portugal culture remained under the control of the Salazar dictatorship. Until 1974 it was one of
the main areas that the anti-liberal and nationalist totalitarian regime exploited for propaganda
purposes, deciding on cultural activities and the value to be attached to them. After that, the
return to democracy was accompanied by a period of government instability which, until the
1980s, made it difficult to formulate an approach to cultural policy. So it is only recently that
Portuguese governments have confirmed the importance of cultural policy. The three,
successive teams of social democrats concentrated first of all on heritage and on literature,
disregarding live performance, visual and audio-visual arts and cinema. Not until 1995 was
culture placed, for the first time, under the aegis of a Ministry of Culture. Between 1995 and
2002, however, Portugal went through a period of severe budget cuts. Moreover, between 1995
and 2005 there was a succession of no fewer than six ministers for culture. This shows that
Portuguese cultural policy is as recent as its institutionalisation. It should be noted that the
Portuguese institutional system has adopted a model that combines the arm’s length principle
PE 375.307