Wednesday 19 March 2008

Working meeting of the network

Working meeting on the theme of:
- collaboration of the network at the meeting of the Cultural Contact Points Network during the Slovene EU Presidency
- possibilities of further developments of the Informal SEE Network of Cultural Portals

Present (representatives of InSEEcp and of CCPs HR and SLO):
- Anja Jelavic (Ministry of Culture of Republic Croatia / CCP HR)
- Deborah Hustic (Ministry of Culture of Republic Croatia / Culturenet.hr)
- Dea Vidovic (Clubture Network / Kulturpunkt.hr)
- Marija Mojca Pungercar & Dusan Dovc (SCCA-Ljubljana / Artservis & Evrokultura)
- Mateja Lazar (SCCA-Ljubljana / CCP SI)

Zagreb, February 7, 2008

A. Informal SEE Network of Cultural Portals
As the follow-up of two regional workshops of cultural portals, held 2006 and 2007 in Belgrade, the SEEcult.org portal for South-east Europe culture with its partners from region continues developmental project of networking in the field of digital culture in region.

At the meeting in Zagreb, members of the network discussed the aims of the network and how to start expanding the network by including portals from different SEE countries (1st stage: in the region of ex-YU countries).

The members agreed that first steps should be taken as follows:

Network
- to define ways of a formal operating of the network
- to review the statement of the network
- to describe the history of the network
- to review short descriptions of all members portals
- to prepare some questions for editors (politics, langugae, finances) in order to get similar descriptions of cultural portals
- to research culture on-line in BiH, Montenegro, Macedonia in order to detect possible new partners/members

The blog
- to start working on the inSEEcp blog
- to prepare links to network members
- to provide a domain for the blog
- to start organizing different contents for the blog (e.g. rubrics for cultural policies) and to search for interesting themes for the articles
- to prepare an article / editorial comment from the perspective of language (which language is used by different cultural portal) in the light of promoting multilingualism in Europe

Fundraising
- to prepare a project proposal for the ECF open call, deadline April 1, 2008

B. Meeting of the CCP Network during the Slovene EU Presidency

Mateja Lazar (responsible for the CCP SLO) presented the program of the CCP meeting (to be held in Ljubljana on June 12-14) including also a public conference dealing with the subject of networking in the cultural sector with a special emphasis on cultural cooperation between the EU and SEE region. This public event will be organized as a moderated discussion with guest speakers and panelists, aamong them two representatives of the Informal SEE Network of Cultural Portals.

Re-network!
International conference on networking in the cultural sector and stimulating transnational cooperation and free flow of information

In the light of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008 (EYID), the meeting will focus on intercultural dialogue between the EU and South East Europe (SEE). The SEE region is an integral part of the Slovene orientation not only due to its historical and geographical links but also especially in the light of further enlargements of the European Union. On practical level, the meeting will be structured around the topic of fostering the networking and information flow between different arts and culture stakeholders in the EU and SEE region.

The international conference entitled Re-network! will be dedicated to the topic of networking seen as an indispensable prerequisite stimulating free flow of information and transnational cultural cooperation. Networking in arts and culture has had a long tradition in Europe and there is hardly any professional organisation that is not a member of at least one international network. However, networks as well are facing radical changes affecting cultural industries: new technologies enabling free flow of works and information, audience being transformed into active users… It seems that the only problem to be solved remains free flow of persons, i.e. transnational mobility of people working in the cultural sector.

With the special emphasis put on the intercultural dialogue between the EU and SEE the conference’s aim is to find out how “old” and “new” cultural networks respond to these circumstances and how they manage the problem of free flow of information especially if relevant to transnational cooperation.

The conference (public panel) will focus on the political and cultural context of developing and enabling cultural networks as a link between local, national and international cultural milieu.



(Text by Dusan Dovc: SCCA-Ljubljana / Evrokultura)