Appendix 6 - International Music Council

public. The idea was changed into an additional funding programme for programming
Dutch and modern repertoire.
EXAMPLE 6: SLOVAKIA
The rural areas receive special attention by the Ministry of Culture, which has set up its
own Council for Traditional and Popular Culture. A significant part of the Pro Slovakia
Programme is reserved for it. There is a strong tendency to ethnic and cultural attachment,
which is centred to the body of ULUV (Centre for Folk Art Production).
It seems that governmental activities have built a balance between heritage and
conservation and creative activities on the major fields of theatre and music.
There is an overall decline in funding for culture with no real provision of alternative
funding. There is also less financial security, resulting from administrative decentralisation,
uneven regional development and the priority given to the social and educational sector.
The Pro Slovakia Fund became, after long years of independence, a ministry-controlled
programme in 2002. It supports a variety of structures and projects, but the objectives are
not very clear. Matica Slovenska is a very old foundation with its own almost exclusive
cultural activities, responsibilities and funds which effectively acted as the real Ministry of
Culture in the time from 1992 to 1998. Now it serves national political interests and is no
longer funded by the state since 2000. Funding in Slovakia is currently in an extremely
weak position: culture is solely state-funded and funds are centrally managed and subject to
continual cut-backs. Our informant said that they are channelled through intermediate
agencies and simply intended to cover operational deficits without any defined programme
being there while the country is making transition to decentralisation.
Funds draw on sources that are not directly state-controlled (fiscal measures, private
donations, patrons, sponsors etc.)
CONCLUSIONS: SUBSIDY AND MUSICAL DIVERSITY
Reports on cultural subsidies in the countries of Europe rarely mention musical diversity
explicitly. Instead the reports focus on subsidies in a more general context. The same holds
true for most of the legal documents (decrees, acts etc.) in which the state regulations
themselves are formulated and since these are the original text containing the official
regulations and standards the problem of interpreting these texts is inevitable.
Another problem is that there is hardly sufficient information on the selection of people and
institutions who are to receive subsidies – are subsidies provided only to citizens of the
respective state or are they potentially provided to anybody? A rare exception is the
example from Belgium.
In many cases the regulations do not contain such information since the distribution of
subsidies is left to special advisory boards. Such a structure is potentially open to diversity
as far as the regulations are concerned, but if it actually operates like this the mode of
regulation is highly dependent on the composition of the respective board – an aspect which
has not been regarded here.
From what has been shown above, it seems that there is a tendency of structures favouring
musical diversity, such as decentralization, a subsidarian system, and the development of
third sector, which is developed stronger in Western Europe than in other areas of Europe.
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