Ministerstvo kultury awarded grants, which are slightly higher than last year

Prague - The Ministry of Culture (MK) announced that this year it will distribute over 82 million crowns in grants for four artistic fields. Together with support for regular festivals, over 140 million crowns will go to live arts. Compared to last year, this is 46 million crowns more. The grants themselves have been increased by 12 million crowns compared to last year. This was communicated to ČTK by the ministry's spokesperson, Marcela Žižková.
    The results of the grants are available on the MK website. The data listed there differs slightly from the figures provided by the spokesperson; according to her, the difference is due to a mandatory reserve that, according to last year's ministerial directive, can amount to up to ten percent of the funds allocated for grants. In this case, it could therefore amount to up to eight million crowns.
    The funds for the grant proceedings come from the MK budget through the cultural activities program. This is the only key funding source for non-state cultural activities at the ministry. According to estimates from the Council of Artistic Communities and the Initiative for Culture, the program has been lacking 300 million crowns annually for several years.
    The cultural activities program had an approved budget of 365 million crowns last year, and this year it has 497 million crowns.
    In the autumn of 2005, public protests succeeded in increasing this budget for 2006 by 100 million crowns through the legislative assembly. However, the grant proceedings were only enhanced by 20 million crowns last year in contradiction to the assembly's decision, as the office admitted this year.
    A criticized practice in the distribution of funds was that regular festivals received contributions from the cultural activities program - this year, however, the MK has earmarked funds for them as priority events. Every year, millions are also distributed based on "recommendations of the MK leadership," as stated in the office's annual reports; these funds do not go through a selection process, and projects receive support directly. More than the underfunded grant proceedings, people from the field are bothered by this opaque practice.
    The same criticism is directed at the Prague City Hall, which distributes tens of millions of crowns annually for cultural grants and allocates a significantly higher percentage from its budget to culture than the state does. However, Prague will also distribute several tens of millions of crowns within the so-called partnership. Part of the money always goes to business entities, which is not appreciated by grant recipients among artists or some council members. Last week, the city postponed a decision on granting partnership funding of a total of 40 million crowns.
    The ministerial grants, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Arts and Libraries, include areas such as theater, dance, visual arts, and music. Compared to last year, the commission has increased support the most for theater this year.
    Last year, 20 million crowns were allocated for theater projects; this year it will be 25 million. This amount will be shared among 90 projects. Dance will receive 11 million crowns this year compared to eight last year. More than 60 applicants will share this allocation. Experts welcome any increase in support, yet they estimate the needs of the sector to be double that amount. Grant applications this year totaled 34 million crowns.
    Music will receive a total of 23 million crowns from the state in grants this year, three million more than last year. The total amount requested in grant applications was 69 million crowns. However, theaters and orchestras also receive funding from the ministerial program supporting professional theaters and orchestras. This year, 82 million crowns will go into it, while last year's budget allowed only 39 million crowns. Later, the government, at the proposal of Minister Vítězslav Jandák, added 25 million crowns to the program. Representatives of artistic communities and many others working in the culture sector, however, see the needs of the aforementioned program at 100 million crowns.
    Visual arts will receive something just over 23 million crowns this year, an increase of 600,000 crowns compared to last year.

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Selection of awarded grants:

Exhibitions:
Municipal House Brno Association: Elly Oehlerová, Oskar Oehler 150,000,-
Listeners' Association of Architecture: Leaden Dušan 75,000,-
Faculty of Architecture CTU Prague: DUTCH LADIES 50,000,-

Symposia, creative workshops:
EUROPAN CZ: EUROPAN 9 CZ 100,000,-
Circle, O.S.: Circle, lectures 50,000,-

Publications:
Golden Ratio, O.S.: Golden Ratio 350,000,-
ARCHIWEB: archiweb.cz 120,000,-
Museum of the City of Brno: Jiří Kroha 200,000,-
AAAD: 3+1: housing culture of the 70s 80,000,-
Golden Ratio: Contemporary Czech Architecture 40,000,-

Year-round exhibition program:
Center for New Architecture: Year-round program 50,000,-
Dan Merta: Year-round program Gal. J. Fragnera 500,000,-
Centre for Central European Architecture: Year-round program 400,000,-

> Complete results